CHAPTER 56
Despite his reputation for fearlessness, births scared Billy because his own almost killed his parents. Watching a loved one scream in agony for hours -- when he could do nothing to help -- drove him crazy. He needed less stress, not more. He had long felt so burdened by the need to win the war that it was surprising he could get off the ground.
So, instead of returning to Princess before she gave birth, Billy flew to England and Ireland to impregnate the mothers again. Many of the English ladies wanted to meet their Irish counterparts, so he held a picnic party at one of his Irish estates. Puppies and kittens played with the thirty or so newborns among lush grass as the mothers gossiped.
Once Billy returned from the bank, one of the Irishwomen flew straight up and shrieked her wand really loud. It seemed so suspicious that Billy popped his wands and flew up after her. From distant woodlands, Billy saw five hundred quads race over a hill in attack formation. Billy would later learn they wanted to kill him to stop payroll for his battalion of relatives.
Billy had not been this scared since his mother died. To lose someone special was bad enough, but to lose fifty mothers and a few dozen innocent babies turned him into a berserker. Thankfully the English mothers left their babies at home. Although always angry inside, he had never let rage control him before, much less turn him into a homicidal lunatic. He hated being surprised, and so vented that hatred on these baby killers.
Billy blasted the traitor’s head off to warn the other mothers and rose in an arc to use all four wands for blasting instead of stabilizing his flight. As he fell over the hill he did his famous scream while extending four flames to shock them with his identity. That’s right, Billy whispered, you’re facing the Red Baron!
They expected surprise, and boy did they get it. He saw their eyes widen as four-fireball volleys burned holes in their formation. Some rose to swordfight him while the rest slowed like cattle in a stampede approaching a cliff. Those behind -- racing all out -- slammed into those pissing themselves in fear.
Instead of approaching from all sides, they chose to hide in nearby woods. That got them closer, but it also bunched them up so they had nowhere to dodge his huge fireballs. At a minimum, a few loud quads attacking from the opposite side would have had the women looking over their shoulders.
For a long moment Billy faced more quads than he could track, and before he could finish those closest to him, he felt sharp blades stabbing deep. It didn’t occur to Billy to wear body armor at a picnic. He spun like a cyclone to swat them from the sky and blasted so many with his boot wands that he gained altitude. The more powerful the wand, the less time it needs to “breathe” between shots, so Billy’s fireballs flowed out like water from a hose.
Having fixed their position, Billy rose to the edge of their range. Their fireballs felt no worse than sitting too close to a bonfire. Shocked to see their leaders fall, the best rose up to swarm Billy. Expecting this, Billy over-flew them, which put their backs to his women. He deliberately made himself the target so the ladies could shoot them in the back. If he wasn’t terrified to death, he’d have laughed as they slammed into each other, trying to reverse direction in mid-charge.
About half of the survivors attacked Billy while the rest chose to slaughter women and babies. The ladies formed a 25 X 25 meter vertical wall and fired at the charging Irishmen -- something they could not have done if even one enemy attacked them from behind. Pausing their charge gave the ladies valuable time that the Matriarch put to maximum use.
Those chasing the Baron were too angry to change targets, so Billy lured them farther away to split them up. He flew up backwards to keep shooting at them. Blasting with his boot wands made his ascent unpredictable. This strung them out, separating the fastest from the slowest. He killed less than half of the few hundred chasing him when they stopping chasing him at all. Out-numbered over 100-to-1, the worst quads feared getting too close to the Baron. Billy was used to veterans -- he knew how they think. These guys probably never killed a quad in their lives. The Baron fireballed their leaders -- now they didn’t know what to do.
So Billy attacked them. He descended, like in a swordfight on stairs, careful to not get within range of too many of them. Few of them had lethal fireballs beyond one hundred meters, so Billy didn’t even bother to avoid the weaker blasts. The most terrified wouldn’t even get within range, so the ambushers looked like a snake in the sky when they should have all enveloped him at once.
Billy realized he faced bullies rather than warriors by the expression on their faces. Billy couldn’t afford to let them run so, instead of pressing his attack, he actually eased up. With just fifty left, Billy put himself in the middle, hoping they didn’t rush him all at once. The closest died first, so most stayed away.
It was the most bizarre firefight Billy had ever been in. The enemy did everything wrong. He could shoot farther, yet fear kept them at the outer limit of their range. This felt more like practice than battle. Kids throwing rocks at him would have been more dangerous. Billy’s challenge was killing them without scaring them into fleeing.
Then he realized they were waiting for his blood loss to knock him out. Surrounded by enemies, Billy frantically applied bandages to his worst wounds while avoiding fireballs.
He got down to a couple dozen when the ladies swarmed them. The ambushers threatened the babies of powerful mothers and so got what they deserved. When Emily approached, he basically fell into her arms.
“Kill them all,” he whispered before losing consciousness. Billy couldn’t afford any witnesses to his four flames. If just one of these Irishmen escaped, the world would learn the identify of the Red Baron, and bounty hunters would kill his families for the Khan’s gold.
The ladies weren’t in the mood to take prisoners, so they fired down at the wounded desperately stumbling towards the nearest rock or ditch. It must be horrible, waiting to be burned alive, so the mothers slow-played it by taking turns rather than ending their enemies before their rage. The ambushers died screaming, their flesh literally cooking.
One of the Irishwomen returned after sunset with his battalion of Irish relatives. After collecting videos to document their identities, the Irish mothers led them across the island to avenge themselves on the friends, family, and supporters of the ambushers. To deter future attacks, they dropped the traitor’s newborn on his head in front of the parents of the bitch who betrayed them, before slaughtering the entire family.
Billy woke up three days later, heavily bandaged, and as weak as the babies crawling on him. Emily, also wrapped like a mummy, snored beside him.
“Am I wearing a diaper?” he asked Susan. “You’re ruining my fearsome reputation.”
“We had some extras,” Susan explained. “You had three life-threatening wounds and a dozen minor ones. They seemed to heal even as I treated them. Another week and they’ll blend in with all the old ones.”
“I recover quickly. I can probably survive anything as long as I keep my head.”
“Must be nice.” The Matriarch looked envious. “Your quick reaction saved us. We should all be dead.”
“I assumed I was dead,” Billy confessed. “I just wanted to take as many with me to avenge my babies.”
“Our Irish sisters should have warned you this may happen,” Susan answered. “Five paid for this mistake with their lives, plus two of my granddaughters. Most of us got hurt when they broke up our wall, and ten of the ladies have serious wounds. Luring so many away was brilliant on your part. They should have slaughtered us, then assassinated you later. Just imagine your reputation if people thought you abandoned your women and newborns. Instead of them, people would have called you a Baby Killer.”
“I didn’t enjoy killing the Irish like I enjoy killing Mongols. I have never killed anyone not pro-Mongolian before. Every time I kill a Mongol, I feel one less threat to my life. The more Mongols I kill, the safer I feel. In contrast, killing Ir
ish felt necessary, but unpleasant. I didn’t care for it at all.”
Susan had an ugly scar across her face and a patch where her left eye used to be. “Emily fought like a lion. She must love you very much to throw away her life like that.”
Billy’s love for Emily was deep, but not intense like for Princess. And he sure didn’t want to discuss his feelings with her great-grandmother.
“You lost an eye because of me.”
“I lost an eye defending my family. I’d rather die fighting than let babies become orphans.”
“Please have Richard double their monthly payments. Do they now know my other identity?”
Susan sighed. “I don’t think so. The hill distorted your scream and the ladies ran out of mercy when one of the attackers said they planned to rape us and kill the babies. They may as well have kicked a cub in front of a bear. We ran down every one that fled.”
“How vulnerable are we here?”
“The English mothers guard us while the Irish mothers hunt down the loved ones of those who tried to murder their babies. The press is calling this a Bitch Hunt. Nobody has ever seen so many women in a killer mood, with the capacity to act out their revenge. We’ve actually lost more mothers since the battle than in the battle. Usually the Irish fight between families, tribes, or kingdoms, but this time everything is confused. You should know that they have been killing the children of the ambushers on sight, which is triggering bloody payback. This could start a war that no one wins.”
“Tell the Irish mothers I’m want to meet them in England, then find a way to keep them there. The angriest will continue until they’re killed, but we can save the rest.”
The rebels not only lost the battle, but the war. Their surprise attack on mothers and newborns horrified Ireland, forcing even those who agitated for the old ways to denounce the ambushers for fear of being associated with Baby Killers. It didn’t help that five hundred men couldn’t defeat fifty women. Anyone who opposed the new democratic government was called a Baby Killer, regardless of its veracity.
Billy needed his family to enforce the peace, so he founded a parent company that bought land and started businesses, and a political party that’d institutionalize his vision of a representative democracy.
In particular, Billy bought uninhabited islands off Ireland and England so he could have somewhere to hide. He had houses built, wells dug, and gold buried.
Just in case.