Chapter 31. The Spoils of War.
Shortly after assuring herself that the battle had, indeed, been won, Aster fetched her Army uniform out of the bathroom closet where she had left it, and put it back on. She had no underwear, but that didn't bother her. As soon as she was properly dressed, there was work to do. The actual fighting of a war was exciting, and either terrifying or fun depending on who you talked to, but once it had been won, you could not simply plop onto a bed and eat pastries and drink wine. No, what you had won had to be dealt with, one way or the other.
The first thing they had won, and the first thing that had to be dealt with, were the casualties. The dead ones. The living injured had already been taken care of, one way or the other. Triage dictated that once the battle had been won, the still-living members of the Army who could be saved, had to take priority over almost everything, including finding Aster, the Hero Who Had Made The Darkness. By the time someone had gone looking for her, the wounded had been mostly taken care of.
There were not that many badly injured, of course. Anyone badly enough injured in battle to threaten their lives, by definition could not move very quickly, and would most likely be killed. There was one man who had had half his hand blown off, and was missing his pinky and ring fingers, and part of the palm of his hand. It had been cauterized, and bound up with clean cloths, soaked in alchohol. The man was sitting on a mattress someone had dragged into the Maestro's throne room and had been given a bottle of liquor, but judging from the white color of his face, it was doing little for his pain. Aster shuddered. Suddenly the acid burns on her own hand didn't seem that bad. She cursed the Maestro and whatever gods or devils had brought all of them to such a state that even opium was becoming a rare luxury and wounds had to be treated without painkillers.
"Find one of the Maestro's Betties or other lap dogs with needle tracks on their arm." Aster suggested to an angry looking medic who was muttering something about the tendons in the injured man's ruined hand. "Make them tell you where they keep their stash. Beat it out of them, if you have to. This poor bastard is going to need it. Especially if you're going to try to re-attach the tendons to the ends of the bones."
The members of the Army who were only slightly hurt were for the most part tending to their own wounds, except if they were on parts of their bodies that were difficult to reach themselves. They were settled on couches and mattresses, with plenty of quilts and pillows, and given broth, milk, fruit, and liquor if they wanted it. A few of the injured members of the Army apparently were nauseous, judging from the contents of large bowls next to them.
There were not very many enemy wounded. The Army's victory had been so overwhelming, that most of the enemy had simply been slaughtered, cut down like wheat. Even some of the Maestro's guards who had tried to surrender, had been killed. Everyone in the Army had reasons for absolute hatred of the Maestro and anyone on his side, and after years of being starved, robbed, tortured, having their women raped to death and recently, their children eaten like cattle, very few had been inclined to show mercy or observe the niceties of what would have been the Laws of War from a more civilized time.
Most of the enemy wounded were either those who had run away or hidden instead of fighting, or who had done so after having been hurt. Nobody in the Army was inclined to waste time or supplies treating them. The ones who were worst hurt were lucky if they got an axe to the head. Several of them were not lucky and were tortured, kicked, and spat on for several minutes, before getting an axe to the head (as they were not deemed worthy of wasting an expensive bullet on), or simply dying of their own injuries. The enemies who were only slightly injured were also tormented, but not so badly, and were eventually taken off to be locked in the Maestro's dungeons, where they would be dealt with later, once it was decided what to do with them.
Having dealt with the living casualties, the Army now had to deal with the dead ones. Aster went outside and watched the efforts of several people who were busy retrieving the bodies of those who had been killed in the battle, and sorting through them. They were being placed in two piles. The few casualties from the Army of Darkness were placed on sheets, and respectfully wrapped up. Their enemies, the Maestro's guards, a few of his braver bureaucrats and sycophants, and some Betties who had been unlucky or stupid enough to get in the way of the fighting were simply lined up on the bare cobblestones where most of the battle had taken place. At first they had been thrown in a heap, but Aster put a stop to that as soon as she saw what was going on, and had the bodies unpiled. It took more time and room, and some people grumbled under their breath at the inconvenience. But she wanted to see if Paul Rasse was among them.
She looked at the faces. Some were mutilated, having been shot in the head, or taken a blow from an axe or sword, but there was enough left of most of them that Aster was sure that if Rasse were among the dead, she would have recognized him. But no, he wasn't there.
She kicked at one of the enemy corpses in frustration.
"Where the fuck is he!" she snarled angrily at a young boy wearing an Army uniform. He looked like a boy, anyways, but in order to be in the Army, he must have been at least thirteen. Small for his age, then, like Aster had been. And had done nothing to deserve Aster's ire but be the nearest one to her. "Where the fuck in the seven hells is Paul Rasse?"
The hapless teenager shrugged. "I don't know who that is. But Daniel Wolfkiller wants to see you." He told Aster.
She frowned. She had no desire to see the surly horsemaster and failed to understand why he would want to see her.
"Well, you go tell him where I am. If he wants to see me so bad, he can come here." Aster adjusted her cloak as she glared at the corpses, perversely feeling that they were somehow hiding Rasse from her. "And tell him to find out if any of the prisoners know where Paul Rasse is. Because I want that bastard. If Rasse wasn't killed in battle, then I want him brought to me, alive. Because I want him to live. Live until he's suffered enough, and I say he dies. General Monroe promised me that. Do you hear me?"
"I'll tell him." The boy nodded vigorously. He was not going to argue with Aster, who was not only the Hero who had no doubt saved dozens of lives of the Army by getting the lights out, but was far taller and stronger than he was.
The boy ran off, and a few minutes later, Daniel Wolfkiller showed up where Aster was inspecting the remains of the head of one of the Maestro's dead guards, who had obviously caught a large caliber round in his face, and trying to decide if the hair color matched that of that raping son of a bitch, Paul Rasse. But no, it seemed a little darker.
"I need you to come and look at something." Daniel told her. She stood at attention and saluted, her status as a Hero among most of the army somehow making her take rank more seriously. And Wolfkiller outranked her.
"What is it?" Aster asked.
"Its…" the horsemaster's education in breaking horses, forging iron, hunting, and the stories of his people had not included the concepts he needed to describe the problem to Aster. "It's the Wardogs. In the kennels. I can't really explain it. I don't understand it myself. I need you to come and see."
Aster made a sour face, but followed Daniel Wolfkiller. On the way, he briefly explained to her how he had gone to the stables immediately after the battle, hoping to find any live horses that were of good enough stock to bring to their destination with them. He emphasized the word destination. So long as they were in the palace, where they might be overheard by spies, or even unknown devices that the Maestro might have hidden around and that might, perhaps, still be working even though the power was off, it was forbidden to mention any specific destination by name. No matter whether it be Wisconsin (where they actually were going), or Iceland (where they hoped to trick the Maestro into thinking they were going), or even the Magical Land of Oz. Mentioning anything might somehow give the Maestro a clue as to where they were going.
The horsemaster had found a few horses, but they were no better than the ones they had in the trucks, so he had shot them (unlike the enemy, the horses were deserving of the quick death of a bullet), and now had some old women butchering them for meat. He regretted killing perfectly good horses, but their orders were to destroy as much as they could, and horses were assets that they enemy could use against them, anyways. However, after shooting the horses, Wolfkiller had heard odd noises coming from the kennels, where the Wardogs were kept. That had made him realize something odd. The guards had not used any of the Wardogs in the battle, which made little sense from their point of view. Why wouldn't they have used them?
"So, I went to see what was going on in the kennels." The former horsemaster explained to Aster. "And I saw… well it's odd. I don't understand it. You've read all those books, and learned stuff from your father about animals. Back in the Zoo. So maybe you can take a look."
They got the kennels as Wolfkiller finished his story, and he swung open the gate for Aster, holding his rifle ready, in case one of the Wardogs attacked.
"Are they sick, do you think?" He asked Aster. She didn't answer at first. Very little about animals puzzled Aster but this did. What she saw behind the gates to the kennels was nothing she had seen or heard of before, or even read about, or had cause to expect.
"I'm not sure." She finally said. She looked from one Wardog to the other, her mind sorting through the symptoms they were showing, and the other evidence available. She could certainly see how they might appear to have an illness of some kind. They were all lying on their sides, and whimpering, and quivering slightly. But Aster couldn't recall any sort of animal disease that she knew of that had those sort of symptoms. Sometimes the last stages of rabies could be like that. And there were no more rabies shots, like there had been back before the War. But it really defied the odds that every single dog would come down with identical symptoms of the last stages of rabies all at the same time. And if they had had rabies, the guards certainly would have killed them far earlier. It almost seemed more like they had been drugged or poisoned. But that really didn't make any sense, either. Why would the Maestro's guards, or anyone in the Maestro's palace, try to incapacitate or kill the Wardogs right when they were most needed, when the palace was being attacked?
Of course, they weren't just dogs, though, were they? Aster could have smacked herself in the head. They had parts of machines attached to them. To their bodies, and even to their brains. They were… what was the word they had used in stories in books before the War.
Cyborgs.
Looked at from that point of view, the behavior of the Wardogs made far more sense.
"I think… I think we got a bit lucky." Aster said to Daniel Wolfkiller. "The Wardogs… they're not just dogs. They have machine parts in them. Computers. I think maybe the machine parts actually control them, and when I put the power out, it shut down whatever was controlling the Wardogs. A good thing, if the Maestro's guards had been able to use the Wardogs during the battle, it might have gone the other way. Or at least a lot more of us would have been killed."
"Can you fix it?" The Wardogs acted like they were almost in pain, and the horsemaster disliked seeing that.
"Fix it?' Aster snorted. "I don't even know how they were made, or what sort of crap the Maestro put in their heads. Much less how to get it out. It may not even be possible to get it out… it might not even have been put into the dogs with surgery. It might have somehow grown in there. I don't know. I've read a few stories in old books about something called nanotechnology. Tiny machines, that you would need a microscope to see, that could be made to do things inside a person or animal. I don't know if the stories were real or not. If they were real, it wasn't good. But it doesn't matter. I still can't fix it. And I think you need to make sure to shoot the Wardogs before they put the power back on in the palace. Once it goes back on, whatever's wrong with them now might fix itself, and they might attack us."
Wolfkiller nodded. He didn't understand what Aster had been talking about regarding nanotechnology, and wasn't sure if he believed it. Machines so small that you couldn't even see them struck him as nonsense along the lines of fairy magic or the more ludicrous religious cults that existed in and around Dystopia. He believed in things he could see and hold in his hand, like the iron horse shoes he made, or the Pre-War rifle he owned. Or the Wardogs. It really didn't matter diddly squat what was in their heads. Obviously something had been done to them, as he could see the machine parts on the outside of them, and Aster's explanation as to why they were acting the way they were made sense, as did the necessity for killing them before the power was restored.
"I'll do it." He told her. "You don't need to watch."
"Use your rifle, not an axe." Aster said. She had gotten down on her knees, and was looking at the metal bits outside of one of the quivering Wardog's skulls, trying to see how it was attached to the flesh. "They were real dogs once, I think. When they were puppies. It's not their fault, what the Maestro did to them. Not like Paul Rasse. Where is that bastard, anyways? Has anyone found him? General Monroe promised me that the Army would try to take him alive. That I'd get my payback on him for what he did to me."
The large man sighed. He didn't want to waste the bullets, on Wardogs that would have gladly killed them, if they hadn't been so fortuitously disabled, but probably there were plenty of bullets somewhere in the Palace that he could use to renew his supply. And Aster was right. It really wasn't the dog's fault. They were only animals, not like that bastard Paul Rasse who had no doubt done things to Aster that Wolfkiller really didn't want to ask or think about. Which brought him to having to give Aster news that she didn't want to hear.
The erstwhile Zookeeper was down on her knees, looking in the mouth of one of the Wardogs, that she had opened with a large stick. What she hoped to see there, Daniel had no idea.
"Listen to me." He told her. "I know what you were promised. But you might not be able to get it. Everyone knows that you were promised Rasse. We asked the prisoners. Most of them claimed not to know where he is. The few who did know… they all said he's not here. That he went with the Maestro, to collect tribute. And they stuck to that story. Do you understand me?"
Aster said nothing. But her body tensed, and she breathed angrily through her nose.
"Look, I know you want to get even with him. I've got a score to even myself, with that green bastard. But we can't wait here for them. When Rasse gets back, the Maestro will be with him. He'll kill us all, if he catches us. We have to be gone, before that happens. Gone, with everything we're going to need to survive at our destination. So we need that mind of yours, to help us decide what to bring. That's what you need to concern yourself with."
Aster seemed distracted. She gazed into the eyes of the Wardog. It was like looking into a pitch black well. Was there still a dog in there, somewhere. The soul of the puppy it once had been, trapped by a malfunctioning machine that had been over-riding it's own brain for who knew how many years? Trapped in a cage far worse, and far more inescapable than the one the Maestro had put her in, back when she was only 14? Aster thought she saw a glimmer of it, deep in the bottom of those black, dilated, pupils.
"Do you understand me?" Wolfkiller said urgently. "You can't be worried about punishment for Paul Rasse."
Aster straightened up, seemingly having come to some conclusion or the other about the Wardogs. There was a distracted look to her. "I'm not worried about punishment for Paul Rasse."
"Good." He nodded, though he didn't quite understand Aster's sudden agreeableness to forget about the revenge she wanted. But then, who knew how the hell the brain of a monster like her worked? "Then go find General Monroe and help him decide what we should take with us out of the palace."
"I will." Aster nodded. "Just make sure to shoot the Wardogs. Use your rifle, like you promised."
Aster went back into the palace, trying to find General Monroe, and was informed that he was out in the courtyard. She went back out, the front way, and was greeted by the sight of members of the Army scurrying around the now mostly cleared area, bringing out any small flatbed trucks, wagons, sleds, bags or other such things that they had been able to find in the Maestro's palace. Some of them were heaped and filled with stuff, mainly food, and were being unloaded onto pallets in the courtyard. Except some of the better tasting food, which was being devoured. Empty vehicles, wagons, and other containers were being driven, pulled, or carried by excited members of the Army of Darkness back into the Palace. The proceedings were being overseen by General Monroe himself, despite his having being badly wounded in battle. He had a quilt wrapped around his shoulders, and was leaning on a couch that had been brought out for his comfort. It was obvious that he was shaky on his feet and really should have been sitting on the couch, but instead he was standing; shouting out orders and waving around his arms, and sending runners here and there on various errands, or to pass on verbal or written orders.
It was to be expected. After taking care of the living and the dead, which were necessary but unpleasant duties, about three hours after the battle had been won, the Army of Darkness finally got to enjoy the fruits of battle. The looting of objects. Everything in the Maestro's palace had to be stripped bare, of course.
They needed it all.
What they didn't require for survival in Wisconsin, they still needed, simply in order to destroy it.
They did not dare take only what they required, and leave the rest. If the Maestro knew what they required, he might possibly figure out where they were going. Aster watched the loading for only a few moments, then when there was a pause in his series of orders, told General Monroe to make sure the power was not put back on until Daniel Wolfkiller had shot all the Wardogs. Then Aster tried to go into a long explanation as to the possible ways the Wardogs might have been created, and why it wasn't possible to remove the machine parts from them, but the General didn't understand most of what she said any more than Daniel Wolfkiller had. Nor did he care. He cut her off after only about fifteen seconds.
"Shut it, Zookeeper." He lowered the quilt slightly and rubbed his right arm with his left hand. There was a bloody rag around it. Probably a bullet graze. A deep one, judging from the amount of blood on the rag. "I get that we need to wait until the damn Wardogs are dead, before putting the fuses back. I was going to wait to do that anyways, until we were sure there were no guards hiding out anywhere in the palace. And I don't give a fuck how the damn things were made. If you want to dissect one, after Wolfkiller takes care of them, you can. I don't give a crap, as long as they can't hurt us anymore."
General Monroe snapped out some orders to someone regarding not putting the fuses back until he gave the order that they could be put back. Which would require not only that the Wardogs in the kennels be killed, but that the palace be completely searched to make sure there were no others somewhere inside that could pose a danger. Any battery operated lights or small vehicles with headlights were to be used to help search the otherwise dark palace in the meantime. Then he gave orders for the city of Dystopia to be searched by several small groups, and any radios found to be smashed, lest one of the people in Dystopia take it into their heads to try and contact the Maestro and tell him what had happened.
This probably wasn't all that likely, partly because most of the people in Dystopia hated and feared the Maestro so likely wouldn't want to either do any favors or draw his attention to them. And partly because the always paranoid Maestro used a nonstandard frequency for radio communications lest others listen in on them, meaning that it was likely that no radios except those in the Palace could broadcast or recieve on that frequency.
But it was still a possibility, and General Monroe believed in erring on the side of caution. The Army of Darkness may have defeated the Maestro's guards, but they didn't have a chance in hell against the Maestro himself. Nobody did. If the Maestro were seen returning by the watchmen that General Monroe had posted on several high points in the city, they would have to leave immediately. That probably meant that the Maestro would be able to follow them, and even if he couldn't, they would not have what they needed to survive at the Destination. Either way, they would be most likely doomed.
Once patrols were sent out to search for any radios, General Monroe sat down on a nearby couch that had been dragged into the courtyard for his personal comfort, and gave another order, for the strongest liquor they could find in the kitchens, preferably from the Maestro's private stock, because his damn arm was killing him, and the damn cancer was eating at his guts, and the noise was killing his head and he had had just about all he could take and if someone didn't get him some liquor pronto, he'd have them court martialled.
He looked up at Aster. "What the hell are you still doing here, Zookeeper? Unless you got liquor for me or want to put on a tomato show for me, go make yourself useful. I'm in no condition to enjoy a damn tomato show anyways, and I got things to think about. And your damn yap makes my head hurt worse than it already does."
Not wanting to be around in case General Monroe got in the mood to start hanging people again, starting with her, Aster went back into the throne room, where, now that the army wounded had been treated, the last of the living enemies were in the process of being dealt with. These were the prisoners that had been taken during battle. The shackles that the Maestro had often used on his prisoners were fetched and put on their legs, then male prisoners were locked up in the dungeons and the Betties confined to their own fairly luxurious tower.
There was a commotion, over near where the Betties were being grouped together, to have their legs shackled, before being locked in their own tower. Several male members of the Army of Darkness - and perversely enough, a few female members who must have been ovoids (or lesbians), after having had their fill of food and drink (though liquor was forbidden to all but the wounded under General Monroe's orders, as they needed the soldiers in the Army to be sober in order to hold and loot the palace as efficiently as possible) had decided that the Betties were rightfully part of the loot that they were entitled to, as victors of the battle. They had ripped the clothes off of several crying Betties, and were about to engage in the time honored practice of victorious soldiers everywhere, and enjoy raping the women they had won as spoils.
Aster looked at this for a moment, thinking about Queen Galadriel and Gandalf from the book she had read, a long time ago. They had not dared to take the Ring of Power. It would have made them as bad as Sauron. She shook her head. What good was their victory in taking the Palace if the first thing they did was step into the Maestro's shoes? And then inevitably to become little Maestroes themselves, ruling as tyrants in Wisconsin. And they would have the means to do just that. There were already several pallets loaded with weapons.
Aster bit her lip, her heart pounding just as it did every time she drove her truck, or as it had only the previous night, when she had climbed a rope to a terrifying height. She could feel her new dreams for the future being snatched away from her by the imminent rape of others, as surely as her old dreams had been snatched away from her by the Maestro's rape of herself.
Not good. Now she was going to have to do something stupid that she was not at all inclined to do. She was no Hero. But she had to do it. Because as frightened as she was at the thought of doing it, she was even more frightened at the thought of what would happen if she didn't do it.
Just as she had the previous night, to give herself courage, Aster imagined that she were a strong, feral, female Vampire. One set on pure killing, without the disguise of seduction. She bared imaginary fangs, pushed her cloak back over her shoulders, so that the bat-shaped pin, unique among the women of the army, was easily seen, and drew her Taurus gun. She stepped over to the nearest man who was groping the breasts of one of the Betties, put the barrel of the gun behind his ear, and pulled the hammer back, slowly.
"I can hit your head from halfway across this throne room." Aster said in a deliberately cold voice. "But there's people in the way."
"What the hell…?!" Being interrupted was the LAST thing the man had expected. Especially by someone in the Army. And particularly especially, perhaps, by the normally overly shy Zookeeper.
Who, sadly for him, was now the Hero Who Had Made the Darkness. Also known as (depending on which stories real or otherwise people had heard about her) the Zookeeper; The Only Bitch the Maestro Ever Bowed To; The Alpha and the Omega; and Kali.
The man realized, rather wisely, that there was no way to fight a story. He could kill Aster Aversa, the person, perhaps, but after how she had saved the Army by Making the Darkness, he would simply be committing suicide in a rather painful fashion. The other members of the Army would rip him apart.
"Zookeeper…" the man spread his hands to show that he had no weapon. "Is there a problem?"
"Yes." Aster lowered her gun slightly and decided to use a far more terrible weapon. She fixed each man and woman in the crowd with icy eyes, forcing them to turn away just like the animals turned away from Mowgli, and when the last one looked down she roared in a loud voice, trying to imitate the roaring of the tigers that had once been at the Zoo.
"SHAME ON YOU!"
"Shame on all of you!" The darkness in her face was worse than the darkness she had made in the palace. Or perhaps, a few of the would-be rapists thought to themselves, it was the source of the darkness she had made in the palace. Many of them more than half-believed in magic, and if it existed, surely a Hero like Aster would have it.
"What… just what the hell do you think you are doing!?" There was a tone to her voice as if she were genuinely puzzled. "You prove yourselves last night to be part of the Army of Darkness, the best Army that there is, the only ones who have ever taken the Maestro's Palace. You kill or capture every last one of his guards and officials. And now? Now what do you do? You step into their shoes and decide to be every bit as rotten as they are?"
"But…" One of the men protested slightly. But Aster had already figured someone would do that, and was prepared.
"But…but… but…" She sneered. "But what? Real soldiers attack enemies. Not helpless women. What do you think you're doing? Who do you think these women are?"
She let them think about that for a moment. "Maybe you've forgotten already. Maybe now that you're part of the Army of Darkness, maybe you've just conveniently forgotten how things were before you were a member, and why you joined the Army. Maybe you've forgotten how the Maestro used to take… to steal… your daughters… your sisters…your wives…even your mothers."
She fixed her eyes on the members of the groups who were of different genders and ages in turn. Even the ovoids, who would still have female relatives or even 'wives' that the Maestro could have taken to be one of his Betties.
"So, now you're just going to go and rape these women, because you figure they're part of the loot we've won. Like the beds and food and hot baths. Time to enjoy yourselves. Time to rape your own children. Or if they aren't yours… they're someone's children. Or someone's wives. What would you want them to do with YOUR children, if things were different, and they were the ones who had won a battle? Hell, less than a year ago, I was one of them. Would you have raped me?!"
At the mention that she had been one of them, a few of the Betties finally recognized Aster.
'The Murderer'. She saw one of them mouth silently, her face white with fear. They had not treated Aster well during her time in the Maestro's palace, and feared that she was sparing them from being raped only so that she could do something far worse to them herself, now that she seemed to have a lot of power within the ranks of the Army that had just captured them. A few of them pointed at her with trembling fingers. But none of them said anything out loud.
"Think about what you're doing." Aster told them. "And what it's going to be like, afterwards? I mean, how long, really, is it going to feel good, if you rape these women? A few seconds? A few minutes? The Maestro pretty much ruined me for ever having sex, so I don't really know, and the books I've read don't tell me much. Maybe one of you can tell me. But it can't be all that long, because from what I've seen of men, after having sex, in a day or two, they want it as badly as they did before."
"But I'll tell you what will last a long time." Aster said. "Knowing what you've done. That you're a rapist, and that you've turned the Army of Darkness from noble fighters for our children and the human race into a just another selfish band of robbers and rapists. Because I promise you, if you do this thing, you will NEVER be able to forget that you are a rapist. A Monster!"
It was a terrible, unmerciful trick on the human mind, that Aster played. And she played it deliberately. She knew that the best way to guarantee that someone would never be able to forget something, to stop thinking of something, was to try to get them to actively NOT think about it. It was an old tavern game, from before the War. She and Thumb had sometimes played it on each other, when they were in a mood for jokes.
I'll give you a million dollars if you don't think about a pink elephant for the next ten minutes. Oops, sorry, you lose.
"You'll never be able to forget it." Aster drove the point of her weapon in deeper. "And it will poison the rest of your life. You may someday get married, have children. How will you tell your wife or son or daughter that you are nothing but a raping monster? Or will you just keep it a secret, and know in your heart that you don't deserve any of your family or life? That it's all a lie? That it's hollow and rotten inside like a bad egg?"
"So…" The would be rapists seemed more confused than anything now. "What should we do…?"
It wasn't clear as to whether he was asking what they should do with themselves, or the women. Aster addressed both possibilities.
"Put the women in the tower, which is what you were ordered to do." Aster drove her weapon deeper, pushed by the knowledge that they had not followed their orders like proper members of the Army of Darkness. "But if any of them want to be with one of you, and come with us to our Destination, of their own free will, they can. But as free women, not slaves like the Maestro has made them. Otherwise, put them in the tower and give them something to eat and drink. Then, if you want to enjoy yourselves, there are decent ways to do it. There's plenty of food and baths and soft beds here. And there's women in the army. Or your hand."
But from the sound of it, Aster had shamed most of the men out of wanting sex at all, at least for the present time. The Betties were made to line up, to be marched off to their tower. Several of them were glancing nervously at Aster. They had not been nice to her when she had been one of them, and anyone who could make a large group of rapists back down from their intentions was probably to be greatly feared by anyone with any sense. Because the only other person they knew who could do that was the Maestro himself.
As the Betties were marched off, the rest of the would-be rapists went back to their proper duties, which was mainly helping to loot the palace. A few ovoids were muttering something Aster didn't quite grasp. In fact, she hadn't understood what they were doing with the male rapists in the first place, as a woman really couldn't get off that way the way a man could. But it seemed that their goal was either to prove that they were just like a man, or that they were somehow stronger and better than the Betties were. Both of those reasons made little sense to Aster and simply proved to her that the women involved were idiots, since the first one was absurd, like a raven trying to prove that it was just like an elephant, and the second one would have been better proven by the ovoids getting into a fight or race with the Betties rather than trying to rape them.
But then, people had never made much sense to Aster. Any more than she made sense to most of them.
Just then, there was a commotion by the entrance to the throne room. Several people began shouting, and Aster heard the sound of motors from outside the palace. Were there more guards coming?! Aster drew her gun and ran out of the throne room, down the hallway, and out the main doors of the Palace.
Then she laughed. The motors were from the trucks. The ones with their children in them. The runner General Monroe had sent to inform them that the battle had been won had reached them, and now they had come, so that the trucks could be loaded with all the things they would need to keep themselves and their children alive in Wisconsin.
She holstered her gun, as the children ran out, and were greeted by their parents. A few of them were actually the would-be rapists that Aster had shamed out of their intentions. One of them saw Aster, standing by herself. He looked at the young girl, perhaps four or five years old, that was hugging his leg, then looked at Aster again.
"Thank you." Aster saw him mouth. She couldn't hear the words, with all the excited shouting of the re-united families. Because it was for this, this moment, that they had all faced the terror of the previous night, and it was the lives of their children that were their true prize, even more than the loot to be taken from the palace.
At least for the others. Not for Aster. She had no children, and never would. And her prize, if she could get it, still lay unimaginably far away both in distance and in time.
She shook the cold thought away. Thinking about it was like gazing into the abyss of the stars at night, or that well of darkness she had seen in the Wardog's eyes. Any light, unimaginably far away. She might be part of the Army of Darkness, but thinking about that sort of darkness, too much, was a quick route to madness.
Besides, there was food to eat. Meat and bread and cider and fruits and cakes and pies and all the hot baths and perfumed soap she wanted. At least for the next few days. And she had saved a lot of people. They were worth saving, as much as any animal species, she supposed.
She thought about the contents of the palace. Her eyes closed as she concentrated. There were things in it that -out of all the members of the Army of Darkness - only she knew about, and that only she could use. She thought about them, arranging them in her head like the pieces of an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle, until the sort of picture she wanted… no, the sort of future she wanted took form.
Aster smiled and nodded to herself. Yes, there were spoils worth taking, even for her.