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branch without spending an hour just greeting
relatives.”
    The Matriarch put a friendly arm around him.
"Not that I doubt you, Baron, but it’d help if we could record it
to show the skeptics. It's a long flight for most of them."
    The happy couple led the family to their
secret stash in the nearby woods. What they dumped onto the grass
stunned the family.
    “The greedy bastards stole all this?”
    “No wonder the queen has to raise taxes.”
    “We need everyone in England to see
this.”
    "Everyone record me," the Matriarch
commanded. "Lady Elizabeth and her new fiancé offer a gold kilo, or
its equivalent, to Prince Richard’s families who attend their
wedding the day after tomorrow.”
    The adults flew off to spread the word. As
soon as the last one disappeared in the sky, Liz playfully slapped
William. "Why didn't you tell me you were rich?"
    "I was happy you’d marry me thinking I was
poor. Whenever I travel within the Empire, I check out the local
dueling champion. If I'm confident I can beat him, then I bet
heavily."
    "Then why the hell did we rob my uncle?"
    "We’ll have a hard life on the run, so I had
to see how you handled adversity before swearing to spend the rest
of my life with you."
    "Are you really gonna spend the rest of your
life with me?" she asked, eyes locked on his.
    He gave her the perfect answer: "With you,
only you, and with you forever.”
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    His wife's anguished screams pierced
William's soul. He stopped his relentless pacing to peek into the
birthing room again. Liz, bravely practicing the breathing
techniques he taught her, lay sweating on the bed. The team of
midwives urged her on, ordering her to push the baby through.
    After all the fights with bounty hunters and
petty bandits since leaving England a year ago, he knew how tough
she was. And that only made her unbearable pain harder to handle.
The love of his life suffered in agony, and he could do nothing to
help her. One of the women snapped at him, and he shut the door
like a boy caught watching a woman bathe.
    "Maybe you should wait outside," his fake
cousin suggested.
    William's primary ancestor was Baron Karl von
Richthofen, who Genghis Khan killed while slaughtering the
inhabitants of Peking in 1215. The Baron's family swore a blood
oath of revenge and recruited quads from across Europe to fight the
Mongols. The Khan eventually had to send super-quads to Prussia to
wipe out the von Richthofens. Luckily, a girl named Rachel escaped
the slaughter, the lone survivor of a family that once ruled the
Kingdom of Bohemia.
    Widowed while pregnant, Rachel married Taran,
the Hero of Kiev, who never knew the child was not his. Now
accepted in Mongol high society, she raised her son to continue her
family's feud. He started the family tradition of burning the
ancient trees that Mongols needed for great wands. As the last
living descendent, William carried the burden of his family's long
legacy.
    Rachel heavily promoted a video documentary
after Taran’s death to make her fake Mongol family famously
Mongolian to protect her son. Passed from wand to wand, videos cost
nothing to copy, so she distributed it to every library in the
Empire. The investment continued paying dividends as William,
careful to model his hair and beard after a man he pretended to
descend from, introduced himself as the great-great-great-grandson
of the war hero Taran.
    He looked at the kind man who thought he was
William's distant cousin. The irony is that he personally liked his
fake Mongol relatives even more than he liked most Mongols. Plus,
they provided a compelling cover story if anyone ever investigated
him.
    Their marriage infuriated Queen Margaret. Her
punishment was replacing Richard with the now-impotent Aidian as
the official Royal Heir. She could not anoint Prince John because
his stealing angered the country. However, the English liked Prince
Richard far more than Aidian, and the romantic elopement of Lady
Elizabeth captured the hearts of