Fly - Goose Girl Retold

Part 2

TWO

Not for the first time, Yun wondered when this nightmare would end. Certainly not today, or tomorrow, for there were too many corpses to bury after this latest battle. Not that he'd be doing it – burying the dead was work for common soldiers, not princes.

Princes were supposed to take pleasure in sights like this, or so his older brothers told him. Then again, his brothers took pleasure in a great many things that turned Yun's stomach.

Take g**g, the heir to the throne and their illustrious general, and Chao, second in line on both counts. They had set up camp just outside of town, and the pen where their horses should have been was now filled with sobbing women. The wives and daughters of the men who had died on the battlefield, defending the village, Yun assumed from their clothing.

He didn't need to follow the grunts, whimpers and screams to know his brothers had already started celebrating their victory. He wished he didn't have to witness it, but their father would not wait.

Shoving his way into g**g's tent, he averted his eyes from his rutting brother and the girl who squirmed and sobbed beneath him.

"What word shall I send to Father about the battle?" Yun asked.

"Can't it wait?" g**g grunted. He backhanded the girl across the face. "Silence! I can't hear a thing over your whining!"

"I wish it could, but Father must know our losses, and how many – "

"Enough!" g**g roared, drawing his dagger. He plunged the blade into the girl's throat, then yanked it out again. While the girl choked on her own blood, he rose to his feet and tugged down his robe. "What did you say? I couldn't hear you over that b***h's complaints. I told her to shut her mouth, but like all women, she wouldn't listen. She would have made a terrible wife. I did the world a favour." He grinned, wiping his dagger on the dead girl's ripped garments before sheathing it at his waist.

Yun fought down the bile rising up in his throat. How he'd grown up in the same household with g**g, he did not know. "I said, Father will want to know how many of our men died, and how many of the enemy. We must send a rider today."

Gang shrugged. "I don't know. Ask Chao. He keeps track of such things. Can't you see I'm busy?" He ambled out to the pen and seized the nearest girl by her hair. When she screamed in pain, g**g drew his dagger and sliced off her tongue. Then he dragged the gurgling girl to his tent.

Judging by the screams coming from Chao's tent, Yun wouldn't like what he found there, either. But, unlike his brothers, he was an obedient son.

Yun was gratified to find Chao still had his clothes on, though he had a girl in his tent, too. He'd tied her to the tent pole in the centre and chosen to amuse himself with one of the whips the enemy troops used on their horses. He must have been at it for some time, because the short lash had already turned the girl's clothes to ribbons and her exposed skin was a mess of b****y stripes.

"What do you want?" Chao snapped.

To stop this, Yun thought but didn't say. "Numbers for Father. How many dead?"

Chao tucked the whip under his arm and headed for the tiny table in the corner that was already covered in scrolls. He unrolled three before he found the one he wanted, and thrust it at Yun. "Here. Go. If you come back quickly, there might be some girls left for you, too, if we're not through with them yet."

Struggling to keep his expression blank instead of revealing his horror, Yun thanked his brother and hurried out.

For a moment, he stopped beside the pen. The women shrank away from him, as though they'd heard Chao's offer. Perhaps they had.

He glanced around. No one was in view, and his brothers were busy. Yun approached the gate. Any of them could have opened it, for it was latched to keep horses from escaping, not humans. Yet none had.

"Run," he told them, flinging open the gate. "If they catch you, they will kill you."

One woman lifted her head. "We have nowhere to go. They killed everyone else, rounded up us women and...some of us were sent here, while the rest are in the main camp. Entertaining the army." Her accusing eyes told him she knew exactly what that entailed.

"Then die here, or fly and hope to live. The choice is yours, but you are fools if you stay here," Yun said. He turned on his heel and headed deeper into the camp in search of a messenger to carry word home of their victory.

Behind him, a dozen frightened birds flew from their coop. Yun hoped that the ancestors would watch over the escaped girls, even if they weren't his people. They deserved to fly free and not die slaves.

The sounds of revelry drifted through the camp. It seems that the soldiers had discovered the other girls, the ones his brothers had rejected. No doubt all the messengers were taking their turns along with the other men.

Was there something wrong with Yun that he liked his women willing, he wondered. For if the rest of the army derived so much pleasure from striking fear into feminine hearts, surely the fault lay with him.

He did not belong here.

Yun himself would carry word to his father. Leave this stinking battlefield and its sickening pleasures to those who enjoyed such things. Yun would ride for home, and do everything in his power to persuade his father to call off this war.

And as Yun rode off, startling clouds of crows which had already begun to feast on the bloated corpses, he swore that he would rather be among them than become like his brothers.