CHAPTER 6
William, Liz, and six-year old Billy left their ger -- a portable dome-shaped hut -- careful to not step on the threshold because Mongols are either in or out. Snow still covered the tips of the distant Altai Mountains. Smoke rose from the other hundred or so huts that formed this horde, one of thousands that roamed the seemingly endless Central Asia steppe.
To their joy, Billy was a prodigy, sparking his first wand at age three. Very few people could use wands before puberty. He literally flew before he could run. Not all prodigies were powerful, but their boy seemed to have a real gift for wands, so they trained him intensely to prepare him for a hard life.
Billy excelled at wand games like Tag. He could evade kids twice his age for hours as they chased him through the trees. Blessed with great vision and depth perception, the boy had the unnatural ability to miss trees by centimeters when flying full out. He especially enjoyed playing Rock, where he had to avoid kids throwing rocks at him. It usually took years to develop fine dexterity skills, but Billy displayed a mastery of the air that William enjoyed with his hands. He did his first somersault in the air at age five, not appreciating how much that shocked the horde, and flew upside down like other kids did hand stands. It was rare, unnerving, and really awesome.
Billy was pure joy until he accidentally burned their hut with his boot wands. From that moment on, they lived in terror. Until then, they thought only Genghis Khan could blast, project steel, or extend fire from boot wands. Anyone else mysteriously died.
Fortunately, nobody saw it because otherwise his unique ability would have been a death sentence. Billy would have been shot on sight and his killer given a huge reward by the Great Khan himself. Sharing the Khan’s ability meant that the world was not big enough for both of them. One of them had to kill the other.
Or so they told Billy.
All his life, William thought he was too paranoid. It was not until that moment, watching Billy laugh at the fire coming from his boot wands, that he realized he was not paranoid enough.
They moved to China, Japan, and India to learn those languages, study martial arts, and develop their wand abilities in relative peace.
Most quads train to fly far. William, instead, emphasized flying high. Every flier has a maximum height called a “ceiling.” If you can fly higher than your opponent, then you can shoot him, but he can’t shoot you. Greater height means thinner air, however, which meant reducing the body’s need for oxygen. Therefore, the family practiced meditation to slow their heartbeats.
To their shock, monks taught Billy to drop his breathing to near zero. Liz once could not find his heartbeat, even though he was smiling at her at the time. Chanting something relaxing helped Billy fly higher than either parent. Chagrined that the pupil out-did the teacher, William then emphasized endurance.
Those who can fly higher can fly faster due to less air resistance. And those who can fly faster, can fly farther. Before, the parents needed Billy to keep up. Now, the parents needed to keep up with Billy.
They moved frequently, changing identities every time. Often they’d pass themselves off as English. Billy picked up languages easily, so they hired tutors on the safe assumption that he’d need language skills. The family knew they spent too much time in one place when they had trouble sleeping at night.
Constant travel also give William an opportunity to teach Billy geography. He collected aerial images like other fathers collected bad habits. Together they developed a system to organize the images they kept on their wands.
They kept returning to the hordes because bounty hunters never looked for them there. Ironically, they were safest from Liz’ enemies by hiding among William’s enemies.
Because his birth certificate said Billy was eight instead of six, he had to keep up with the other boys in horseback riding, archery, and wrestling. This toughed Billy up, and William wanted Billy as tough as possible. While other kids played, Billy trained.
William put a priority on tactical sense. He’d outline a scenario and walk Billy through it. Then he’d change something that forced a different strategy. Rage and terror drove most fighters, but William wanted Billy to foresee how any given situation would play out before engaging. William collected video montages of every battle he could, and together they analyzed who did what right and wrong.
“Win your fights before they start,” dad would tell him. “The better you plan, the less you’ll bleed.”
William made a living dueling. Liz feared for him every time he entered the arena. However, killing a few thousand Mongols a year boosted his wand power and made him enough to give Global Bank the capital it needed to expand internationally. All too soon he had several thousand of his wife’s relatives on the payroll.
The catch to dueling was getting killed by a better dueler, like a millennial -- those with one thousand proven kills. Proving a kill is easy since a wand records everything it’s used for, from starting fires to moving furniture to blasting enemies, although that memory can be lost when passed to a new owner. Everyone feared millennials because their goal was not money, but longevity. The more powerful the wand, the more years it provided. The Empire made dueling the national sport, pastime, and obsession so kids would grow up dreaming of living forever with wealth, fame, and glory. The best duelers could effectively live forever, although the price of immortality was endless war.
"Good morning," the horde's leader greeted them. "Tomorrow we’ll move north along the Irtysh River for better grazing for the animals."
"We’ll catch up if we’re not back in time," William assured him pleasantly, eager to maintain good relations.
The leader smiled down at Billy. "Beriakh says you almost fly faster than him, and he’s the fastest that I’ve ever seen. Maybe soon you can represent us in the summer games. I’d love to see those arrogant fools beaten by someone half their size."
Once the leader left, William smacked the boy on the back of the head. "You raced the regional speed champion?"
"What?" Billy demanded. "I let him win!"
“I’m counting on you to continue my line,” his father told him for the millionth time. “Don’t get killed until after you’ve reproduced.”
The trauma of hearing her husband fighting for his life while Elizabeth gave birth triggered uncontrolled bleeding that made her unable to have more babies. Liz would never forgive her Uncle John for preventing her from having more children.
As always, the family flew as high, fast and far as possible. Today they went north over the vast Mongolian Plateau to the Siberian forest to visit some friends of the family.
When Mongols originally expanded, they incorporated the Tatars, Manchurians, the Chinese, and those living in the Stans. The one original neighbor who refused were those living in Siberia. Intensely cold and heavily wooded, the Great Khan didn’t need to conquer Siberia because the Siberians couldn’t defend it. Mongols simply took what they wanted, and killed any Siberians who got in the way. The Siberians needed to eat, too, and so attacked rich Mongols. As the number of Mongols multiplied, the number of Siberians dwindled to near-extinction. Mongols probably would have exterminated them long ago if William’s ancestors didn’t provide them with food, money, and wands for the last two centuries.
Survival depended upon living undetected, but William arranged this meeting long ago. A few thousand Siberians greeted William like family and spoke of his parents and grandparents like old friends. William, Liz, and Billy carried all the fruits, vegetables, spices, milk, and medicine that they could carry. They had drop-off points all across Siberia.
The Siberians were down to a thousand or so quads and several thousand two-wanders six years ago when William offered to give them a superior wand set for every quad they created. They also had to agree to stop attacking Mongols to prevent retaliation.
Because William had big plans for them.
The Siberians dispersed after nightfall because they were
harder to detect in small numbers. In the morning, the family flew back south. They stopped for lunch and dueling practice. Billy killed a marmot, skinned and cleaned it, then built a cooking fire under a tree with many branches to disperse the smoke. Unfortunately, some wet leaves caused too much smoke to be seen from above.
A dozen thugs soon showed up, shocking the hell out of Billy, who’d never get over his hatred of being surprised. These parasites lived off of the packs, obeying no laws that restricted their appetites. Far from Mongol authority, they could do whatever they wanted without consequences. The family came across bandits before, but having already flown several hours, they were too tired to flee. Billy wisely dived in the snow to hide himself.
William and Liz put their backs to the forest so the raiders would land with Billy hidden behind them. They closed on the couple, their intent clearly hostile.
"We have nothing of value," William yelled in fluent Mongolian.
"Even from far away we heard your blasts," their leader replied. "But because sound travels so far, we couldn't locate you until we saw your smoke. I’m glad we didn't quit. We love rich tourists on vacation."
Nomads called rich families who briefly roughed it "tourists." Robbing tourists gave raiders the cash they needed to gorge on drink and whores.
"Go find softer targets," William suggested, burning nine-meter-long flames to let the criminals know what they faced. He felt proud of how much his frequent dueling boosted his flame.
In return, the leader fired ten-meters out, which made him among the most powerful on the planet. Some libraries kept lists of everyone who ever produced ten meters because it was so rare.
"You don't become a cook without breaking a thousand eggs," the predator said, using a metaphor for millennials who have killed a thousand warriors.
Just then four fliers attacked William from the rear while the dozen in front flew straight at him.
William saw their plan clearly: to overwhelm him from all sides. The solution was to fly fast through the trees to separate the fast from the slow to deal with just a few at a time.
William led Liz away before becoming trapped. They soon lost all but the fastest. Both wore white deels, the thick fur coats that Mongols favored, so after a turn they dropped down to blend with the snow.
They blasted the leader, who shielded himself just in time, but the next fastest were less lucky. Fireballs took out two and a third crashed into a tree at high speed. Four more hunkered down and exchanged fire until the leader returned.
Then Billy attacked them from behind and sank two boot blades into the two closest, and steel from hand wands into the backs of the others. He fell hard on his back and rolled under cover in case some lived long enough to fire back. His parents charged and finished them off. They transferred ownership of the wands before they turned cold.
"I got several more back there," Billy whispered proudly, unnaturally calm. "Now you guys get the leader to show me his back."
Which seemed as good a plan as any. It’s hard to hit fliers because they can move so fast in any direction. The solution is to fix their attention up front, then kill them from behind.
The couple flew back where they came, but over the trees instead of through them. As expected, the head bandit chased them, his coat still smoldering. The parents then dropped below the tree line and weaved their way back to Billy, who waited patiently in a tall tree. At the perfect moment, Billy launched himself at full speed and impaled the guy with two pikes in the back before he even knew of Billy’s existence. He tumbled head over heels and smacked hard against a birch tree. The blow shook with such force that the snow on its branches fell.
Billy dropped on top of the guy and strictly followed protocol. A dying warrior has nothing to lose by fighting, so Billy sliced his biceps so he could not fire back. Then the boy took his boot wands, whose power filled Billy better than any drug. He had transferred wand ownership before, but not with sticks of this power, and the sensation overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes and soaked up the experience. Wands grow more powerful the more they are used, but people do not blast rocks with the same emotion that they blast enemies, so the more people a wand has killed, the more powerful it became. These ancient wands had killed a lot of people.
Wands don't transfer ownership well, and the more powerful the wand, the harder to transfer. Weak wands, like to store videos, can be passed around without loss of power, but strong ones cannot. Wands taken from cold dead hands lose much of their strength, which is why warriors prefer dueling, where they can take wands while the owner at the moment of death.
As he came down from the high, Billy noticed the dying man staring viciously at him.
"You're just a damn kid," the leader whispered, growing weaker as his blood colored the snow red. "You don’t even know who I am."
"I don’t even care," the boy replied, as he put a boot on the guy’s chest and roughly tore the two hand wands away. The boot wands warned him of the power of the hand wands, which spiked him with a sizzling energy that some prefer to orgasms.
His eyes rolled up into his skull and his skin tingled deliciously. Billy didn’t realize it yet, but he had just become addicted to what quads called “sipping” and what everyone else called “sucking.” The world saw so much war because warriors went crazy from desire without regular shots of wand juice. Sucking a powerful wand dry added decades to one’s life. They say that youth is wasted on the young, and virtual immortality wasted on those who must kill to stay alive.
Billy had no idea how much time had passed, but his parents had already collected the coins and wands from the other fifteen attackers when he came to.
"Let's go home," his mother told him. “Anyone who can shoot flame ten meters is trouble.”
“He’s not dead yet,” Billy objected. “I want to see him die.”
The thug gathered what little strength he had left to whisper to Billy, “My grandfather will make you die horribly, and soon.”
Billy extended flame eight meters with his new wands. “Let him try.”
The boy watched the brute’s eyes go blank, something he’d never tire of. For a warrior, nothing else compared to taking life. The wands in his hands told Billy when the bandit died -- they grew warmer and full of life. Holding the wands at the moment of death is vital to keeping their full power.
Billy vowed right then and there to become the best quad in history.