At the heart of Morellius' war machine was Boxer. In the Emperor's absence, he sat on the throne and gave directions to his fellow courtiers. Each courtier would head up a battalion, and it would be their job to enlist rabbits. Boxer was keen on making this a competitive exercise. He automatically made Rodney's battalion the elite. Boxer decided that this battalion would kill the most hares even before the fight had begun. Already, he noticed, the other courtiers were muttering at its unfairness and wanted their battalion to be the elite one. Boxer sat on the throne in silence and listened. He hoped this whiff of competition would trickle down into the members of each battalion. Anything to distract them from the reality of their task...

Of course, becoming the most important figure in this war of annihilation meant Boxer found it very hard to sneak away. Rabbits, particularly courtiers, were constantly coming up to him with reports or following him around hoping he'd bestow elite status on them as well if they complained about it long enough. He needed to keep them occupied, so he announced that one more battalion would get elite status - but that it was up to the courtiers themselves to assess each other's troops and decide unanimously who deserved it the most. That, Boxer knew, would keep them busy until the war was over, let alone begun.

So when the courtiers all disappeared below ground bickering, Boxer took the opportunity and slunk away. He headed into the trees, promptly leaving the established paths so that he wouldn't run into anybody he didn't want to. His route took him past the scene of the massacre. That had been a distinctly unpleasant task and he'd had to stop to be sick more than once, but he always went back to it in the end. Pregnant females occupied the warren once more. The bodies had been removed straight away. Boxer had made a point of recruiting several hundred rabbits for the job, so that the horror of the slaughter would be on the tongues of the entire colony for weeks and months to come. There were two new sentries guarding the entrance to the warren now. Boxer killed the other two after the massacre.

He picked up the pace when he was past them. He'd already missed two agreed meetings with this contact, so he was desperate not to miss a third. He continued through the wood for a short distance, then he took a sharp left turn and kept going until he reached the roadside. His contact was waiting on the hard shoulder and turned sharply when he heard Boxer emerge from the bushes.

"Finally," the other rabbit said impatiently.

"Don't start," Boxer warned him. "I've been unavoidably detained and you know perfectly well why. Anyway, I'm only an hour late."

"No, Boxer, you're three days late. Our agreed meeting was three days and one hour ago. Don't you think I have anything better to do?"

"Oh, come off it," Boxer said in a surly voice. "Don't even pretend you've been waiting here the entire three days. I know you."

"Yes, but still, very poor show, Boxer, very poor show."

"Look, shall we get down to business or not?"

"Yes," his contact said wistfully. "But let's move first. This is the third day running I've been standing here and if anyone's seen me they're bound to have got suspicious. And if they see you here with me now..."

So they moved. They went further down the road, back along the Writtle Bypass toward Roadkill Turnpike. Then they went through the bushes and found themselves in an overgrown patch where the weeds were all knotted and creeping ivy was choking the life out of everything. They sat down.

"I must say, Boxer, you've disappointed me."

Boxer's piggy eyes widened. "I... have disappointed... you?"

"Yes," his contact said plainly. "You came to me with a proposition to topple Emperor Morellius and what's the last I hear of you? That you've only gone and declared war on the hares and made the man invincible!"

"It's all part of the plan," Boxer said quietly.

"Well, I don't like it," the contact snapped.

"You don't have to," Boxer snarled. "You're only part of the plan, too." Then he realised how provocative this sounded and quickly added, "Though, admittedly, a far more important part than all this silly war business..."

Boxer's contact eyed him suspiciously. "Let me tell you now, Boxer, once again, that if I ever get the impression I'm just another character in this game you're playing, I'll just pull out. And you know where that'd leave you."

"Yes, yes, of course," Boxer said, trying not to sound too obsequious. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I just lose sight of those who matter behind the sheer size of my overarching strategy. But, you must realise, with the best intentions."

"Spare me your sycophancy, Boxer," the other rabbit said wearily. "I know full well what your intentions are. And I fear you only believe your ascension to Morellius' throne is in the best interests of Roadkill Turnpike because of your own somewhat over-egged opinion of yourself. You've yet to prove otherwise."

Boxer almost bowed before him. "And I won't be able to until I am sat on that throne and the rabbits take their orders from me," he said. "Until then, I can only ask for your trust, your assistance and your faith that I mean well."

"Well," the other sighed. "What's the alternative?"

"Exactly!" Boxer got in quick.

"Still," his contact said, stopping for a scratch. "I don't understand why you've gone and started this damn fool war with the hares. It's made Morellius popular again. Plenty would die for him now that wouldn't have before."

"Admittedly," Boxer confessed, avoiding eye contact. "This hasn't gone the way I'd hoped. I was expecting a far more divisive split between those for war and those against. As it is, even the captive breds are on his side!"

"Some things are beyond even your machinations, Boxer. The hares are a unifying enemy. Now, what you should have done is blame us captive breds for the massacre. A civil war would have got you better results."

Boxer frowned, peeved at the retrospective obviousness of it all. "Well, I have to maintain the ruse for the time being, ensure Morellius believes I work for him," he muttered. "It's the only way I can stay within his inner circle, where I can influence his decisions and land him in the shit just when it best suits me."

"Dangerous, very dangerous." The other rabbit clicked his tongue.

Boxer frowned irritably. "And what of the captive breds, anyway? Why are they all supporting Morellius all of a sudden? Whatever happened to using all that religious nonsense to turn them against him?"

"Don't be too hasty to make superficial judgements," the other rabbit warned him. "There are many of us who see this as an opportunity to promote further inclusiveness. By supporting the war, we're proving that we rabbits, whether natural born or captive bred, are one race, not two. What's the alternative? By not supporting the war we'd basically be saying we support the hares..."

Boxer nodded sagely. "Yes, that makes sense, I suppose," he grumbled. "So much for getting the Morellius loyalists and the captive bred factions to destroy each other, though. That was the best bit of my plan, too."

"Well, don't imagine for a minute that there's popular support amongst the captive breds for genocide against the hares," Boxer's contact said, yawning distastefully in the middle. "Most are merely apathetic. It's a vehicle for their political cause, nothing more. And amongst some, there are even whispers that you, and not the hares, were behind the massacre to begin with..."

Boxer's eyes narrowed. "Is that so?"

"Yes. Paranoid conspiracy theories," the other rabbit said. "I don't think anybody really takes them seriously. But the thing you need to remember is, most rabbits, natural borns as well as captive breds, see you as part of Morellius' regime, not an alternative to it. Changing that will be your greatest task."

Boxer ruminated over this for a few moments.

"Well, that's where you come in, Jesus."

NOTES:
A short, punchy chapter to further complicate things in the lead up to war. Even I am having trouble keeping tabs on who is on whose side. Originally Jack was going to be the traitor, shopping in Mopsy and co to Morellius. That was a bit too obvious, so now it's Jesus playing both sides, and Boxer's as much an enemy of Morellius as he is to Peter et al. Basically, the plot's coming down to the clash between half a dozen contenders for control of Roadkill Turnpike.