"They had allies of our own kind," Donald said meekly. "Traitors!"

"Rabbits?!" snarled Boxer, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Captive breds?" the Emperor added disgustedly.

Donald gulped. "No, Your Majesty. The traitors were natural borns..."

Morellius faltered. "Our own people... fighting against us..."

Boxer grinned. "There may be a way, sir, to turn this in our favour."

Indeed, for when the next assault was launched the next day, eight hundred rabbits poured over the crest of the hill and thundered down upon the helpless peat bog at the bottom. By the time the last wave passed down the hillside, the grass had been completely worn away beneath three thousand paws.

Word had spread quickly of the defeat, but it came carefully packaged thanks to Boxer. Yes, the hares had defeated Rodney and his men, but they had only done so because rabbits had helped them. The connotations were not hard for even the dumbest of captive breds to make - if rabbits had helped hares this time, who was to say they had not helped slaughter the females?

This worked well for the Emperor and Boxer. All of a sudden their war wasn't about an outside enemy that needed to be conquered, it was about the enemy within that needed to be rooted out and crushed. Natural borns and captive breds alike, even those who'd only been happy to cheer the rhetoric of war, flocked to the Emperor's call for more troops. A grand army was amassed in a day.

And the numbers continued to grow. Even as the second assault began, those left behind overtook the number taking part. The sight of the landscape invisible beneath the swathes of rabbits marching to battle moved many to join up.

And for those less keen, Morellius' courtiers were already investigating those suspected of affiliating with the traitors. Nervous burrow-mates were reporting each other. Fathers were dragged out and killed in front of their sons for refusing to fight. After all, he who would not fight and die for the Emperor obviously felt more allegiance to the terrorists. What better way to prove which side you were on than to join up now and assist the fight for freedom and justice?

Several hours before the second assault descended upon the hare colony, it began to rain. At Emperor Morellius' request, Boxer himself led the eight hundred into battle. By the time they reached the peat bog, with the grass worn away behind them, the hillside had become streaked with rivulets of mud-water. The water streamed into the bog and turned it into a soggy quagmire.

Even as the attackers waded their way into the mud, Boxer kept them energised with chants, war cries and songs. He didn't want to get to the hare colony and find the enemy had drowned without assistance...

Donald had come out of the previous defeat surprisingly well. As Boxer ensured, word got round that Donald was a great hero who seized command of the troops after Rodney's death. (Rodney, having died, was a suitable scapegoat for failure, and his name was muddied, his family disgraced). Being the only officer with any battle experience, Donald had also become something of a hero amongst the rank and file. Morellius and Boxer not being completely ignorant, they knew Donald was a hopeless twit, so wouldn't let him lead again. However, making him second in command would make him an inspiration to others.

Progress had to slow as the rabbits surged across the sticky peat, but the urgency of those stuck at the back kept everyone moving relatively swiftly. Boxer led from the front, but not quite the front. In the event of any more surprises, he was not prepared to make the same mistakes as Rodney. There were hundreds all around him keen to die for the Emperor and he wasn't one of them.

"Stand fast!" he called twice.

There were others dotted regularly throughout the crowd whose task it was to echo his commands until they reached the back.

The mob came to a rapid stop and fell quiet. There was still that perpetual eager murmur and the rustle of excited breathing and shuffling bodies, but the cries and chanting and singing stopped.

Boxer had ordered the halt one final charge away from the largest entrance to the hare colony. Though only those at the front could see, the remains of those that had fallen the day before lay between them and their target. Word quickly passed back, just like Boxer's orders. The urge to draw blood began to swell in the mob once more. Boxer set himself to let it rise to a pitch.

"Donald, take a scouting party of twenty men and perform a preliminary reconnaissance," he ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir," said Donald, picking his men.

If the hares had decided to defend themselves again, Donald's party would take the brunt of it and almost certainly be wiped out. Boxer was almost hoping for that. It would drive his army into a frenzy, and get rid of Donald too.

His twenty men picked from the most eager of front line troops, Donald crept forward toward the opening. The scouting party walked on all fours, shoulder to shoulder, noses to the ground, in a straight line. As they closed in on the entrance, those at each end of the line sped up to curve round. By the time they had stopped before the hole, they had it completely surrounded.

Behind them, the army fell silent in anticipation.

For a few moments, Donald and his men just listened for any sign of the hares and their traitorous allies waiting for them just a few feet into the darkness of the burrow. Then, when there was only silence, Donald stood.

"I want two volunteers," he said.

He got twenty.

Remembering all too well what tactics the hares had used last time, splitting them up and taking them one at a time, he wasn't about to go down himself. Alistaire had tried fashioning himself as Donald's right hand man and had started to irritate Donald, so Donald picked him and another to enter the colony.

Everyone on the surface near enough to hear gasped and flinched when they heard Alistaire yelp with pain a few moments later.

"Sorry. Slipped. It's very wet down here."

Water was seeping through the porous dirt. When the rabbits stood still long enough, their paws began to sink into the peat and murky water well up around their toes. It must have been even worse beneath ground.

Just then, Alistaire reappeared.

"There's nothing, sir!" he cried. "There's nobody here!"

"Rubbish!" Donald scoffed. "We'll all look..."

So they all slid down into the slimy murk of the hare colony, but Donald knew even before he'd stepped out of the light from above that there was something both dead and deathly about this place. Still, he had to look.

Back on the surface, the bloodthirsty desire for immediate cathartic slaughter had reached a peak and was now waning again. The troops grew impatient. Boxer likewise grew impatient with Donald and his party. They had had enough time to survey the entire colony. Perhaps they'd met resistance...

Just then, Donald burst from the opening.

Though burst isn't an accurate verb and nobody could tell it was Donald until he opened his mouth. The rabbit clawing his way up the tunnel was thoroughly soaked in wet mud that clung to every strand of fur.

"Pull back!" is what he said.

Then suddenly the peat seemed to swallow Donald and he was gone. Except as Boxer stared in horror, he saw Donald hadn't just sunk into it; the ground had vanished beneath his feet and he'd vanished with it.

They didn't even feel the vibrations. There were none. The peat was saturated with water. Any sign of what was about to happen was muffled.

Imagine a wave in reverse. Instead of a wall of mud water racing toward Boxer's front line, what they saw instead was the outer edge of an expanding depression heading right for them. From where Boxer was standing, it looked like some giant human, many hundreds of feet tall, was slowly pressing his foot down over the hare colony. Perhaps that Jesus Christ was right after all.

Perhaps this was the foot of God...

The hare colony was imploding, falling in on itself. All of the air in the tunnels was spluttering up in a spray of muddy water that rained down on the rabbits all around. But the implosion didn't stop when the colony had collapsed. It raced on, swirling into a mighty whirlpool of peat and water.

"Retreat!" screamed Boxer. "Retreat!"

It wasn't just his appointed echoes who repeated the command. The order to retreat was the chant on everyone's lips as they fled to the hillside. There they fought the slipperiness of the slope, and they fought each other.

Few rabbits were sucked into the vortex before it finally settled down, but that was not the point. Boxer stopped, breathless, and watching the bodies of Donald and the reconnaissance party float to the top of the bog, realised there hadn't been any hares in the colony since before they had even arrived.

So it was another defeat. The rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike had been outwitted and defeated yet again. Perhaps he could blame it on a natural disaster. He just had a nasty suspicion Nature wasn't alone in causing the subsidence...

The hares, meanwhile, were making themselves very welcome over at the haven. Any scepticism there was about letting them join the rabbit resistance vanished when the rabbits saw just how fast their larger kith could work. Mont'mar barely allowed her subjects to rest before setting them to labour.

The haven needed complete restructuring. It hadn't been built with any intention. The first rabbits that had escaped the regime of Emperor Morellius built their burrows close to the surface at the top of the hill and everyone who followed just constructed the warren around them. None of the tunnels went particularly deeply into the hillside, and many of the exits were highly visible.

The enemy onslaught was inevitable. The haven needed to be fortified. The first task was to fill in redundant openings, especially those found at the top of the hill. Peter wanted their attackers to have to come all the way uphill, start charging down, but then have to turn round to enter the warren. The tunnels leading from these entrances were then sloped upwards, so any invaders would still have to fight uphill; a distinct strategic disadvantage Peter wished to maintain.

The hare refugees managed in one day a series of tasks that it would have taken the resident rabbits weeks to complete. They could shift in an hour more dirt than a hundred rabbits could shift in a day. They turned a confusing labyrinth of poky rabbit holes into a cavernous stronghold, literally overnight. And then, when the rabbits' demands were met, they had ideas of their own.

A quiet genius of a hare named Ball'rdo, who had quickly risen to be one of the queen's favourites to have around, had a plan for a second sub-warren. It would be just over the other side of the hilltop, joined to the haven by a single long tunnel, but without any exits on that side. However, it would be close enough to the surface for a couple of hares to burrow numerous exits in a matter of minutes. Peter understood when he sanctioned it. It'd be an escape route if everything failed. The survivors could sneak behind the attacking army and scatter.

When Jack returned to the haven for the first time since hostilities had begun, the day after Boxer's disastrous descent upon the hare colony, he barely recognised the place and promptly got lost. It was Mospy who found him.

She took him to see her father. Jack promptly told him all about Jesus Christ's treachery. Peter was pensive, then told Jack to return.

"Despite what we're doing here," Peter said. "We're not fighting this war to defend ourselves against Emperor Morellius. We're fighting it to defeat him. And we can't do that without the help of the captive breds..."

"But he's helping Boxer!" cried Jack.

"Yes. Helping him overthrow Morellius. That's what we want too."

"Boxer's not on our side! He's only plotting against Morellius so that he can usurp the throne. Surely Christ can see that!"

"I'm sure he can, Jack. Remember a conversation we had not three days ago about who truly wins a war. It's not those who fight on either side and obliterate each other. It's those that stay in the middle and pick up the pieces after."

Jack snorted. "He'll betray us if it suits him..."

"Then you have to get back over there and make sure the situation never arises where it suits him to. Lead him to believe that committing his followers to fight with us will result in his ultimate ascension to power..."

So Jack waited until dark again and returned to Roadkill Turnpike. A strange quiet hung over this side of the hillside. Most of the rabbits stayed underground where it was safer. At regular intervals Jack passed fellow natural borns skewered on upright sticks planted in the ground. A few lacked heads. Public slayings of those found guilty of dissidence had increased, as had support for the Emperor.

His fellow courtiers were on patrol. Jack heard the distant cries of punishment beatings being delivered amongst the trees. He took the opportunity to visit Emperor Morellius, who he hadn't appeared before in days. He headed to his throne in the roots of that tree, only to find Boxer already with him.

"The captive breds seek empowerment," Boxer was hissing. "They know that none of them were reported as traitors by Donald. They wish to be rewarded for their loyalty, Your Majesty. They want equal status..."

Jack didn't know what Boxer was up to, but then, he didn't know what most of the players in this awful game were up to anymore.

"We can't give them equal status," the Emperor groaned. "Because they're not equal. They're not breeders. All they can do is eat and poo."

"Give them some authority," Boxer suggested. "Make them a more integral part of your next campaign against the enemy."

"Boxer, no!" Morellius snapped. "If I do that, I will alienate the natural borns even more. This purge is already undermining our position here."

"If we win, it won't matter."

"If we win?!"

"When, Your Highness. When we win. There's nothing quite like victory to unite one and all. Nobody will dissent then. Everybody will be too busy claiming responsibility for our triumph to criticise how we got it..."

Emperor Morellius sighed loudly.

"Oh, Boxer, what would I do without you?"

Jack decided not to go any further lest he give an honest answer. Without being seen by either of them, he backtracked out of the trees. He continued to his original destination - the glade where he went to meet Jesus.

Instead of Christ, however, he found Casper, the former courtier disgraced by Boxer. He was standing with his forepaws in the running water.

"You talk to God too?" Jack asked.

Casper turned sharply. "Oh, it's you," he said.

"I need to talk to Jesus urgently..."

Casper snorted. "You're supposed to meet him through me."

"That's why I'm here, Casper."

"I was talking about last time..."

"Oh." Jack sighed.

"There has to be order, Jack!"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Look, I didn't have time then," he said. "And I don't have time now. Things are about to explode round here..."

"We know," said a voice.

Both Jack and Casper turned. Jesus Christ was standing at the edge of the glade. He looked to Jack like he had come from the direction of that hidden clearing, deeper into the wood, where the captive breds met.

"The haven needs your army. Now," Jack said coldly.

"There are... complications," replied Jesus.

"Then sort them. There's no time."

Jesus came down to the water's edge, sat himself before it and crossed his paws. He watched the weak moon reflected in the trickling brook. It looked like it was winking every time nearby branches swayed across it.

"I have spoken with many of the captive bred tribal leaders," he began. "And many of them think they have found a more peaceful route to salvation. Unfortunately it is a path of collaboration. With Emperor Morellius."

Jack ground his back teeth bitterly.

"I'm afraid the word of God holds no potency held against the word of the politicians, Jack," Christ continued. "There's only a certain point to which I can demand that their faith be blind. I think that's passed."

Jack scowled. "So how do we get them back on side?"

"I don't know if we can," he admitted.

"What about a sign from God?" Casper suggested.

"A what?" asked Jack and Jesus together.

"A sign from God," Casper repeated. "Something to prove beyond any doubt that God is more powerful than all other rabbits..."

"Can you manage that, Jack?"

Jack laughed. He didn't think Jesus was serious.

But he was.

"I'll see what I can do..."

So he left Jesus and Casper in the glade, his legs carrying him back toward the haven but his mind busy elsewhere, trying to think up signs from God. He could think up plenty of spectacular things that would convince him personally, but he didn't have a clue how to pull any of them off. He didn't really want to burden Peter Rabbit with anymore at the moment, but if anybody would have any ideas, it would be him. So he headed idly back around the base of the hill.

The courtiers were still on patrol, and would be all night. Jack made an effort to avoid areas haunted by the wretched sounds of their deeds.

He wasn't alone.

He was at the bottom of the hill, the part still masked by trees, where only the extra strain on his tired legs revealed he was now on a slope. He was climbing slowly up toward moonlight, and the hilltop bathed in it, beyond which was the haven, when he heard shallow, anxious breathing in the bushes nearby.

His first inclination was to speed up. Boxer's patrols might have already been through here and left a dissident bleeding with broken limbs, to await agonising death when the foxes came out looking for breakfast a few hours hence. But then he heard the breathing was actually whispering, and closing in.

He stopped behind a tree trunk and waited.

"Who are you?" he barked.

The two young natural-born bucks jumped.

"P-please, s-sir..." the first cried.

"D-don't h-hurt us!" said the second.

"Why are you following me?" Jack growled.

The two adolescents looked at each other. Jack noticed they had both been badly beaten. Their faces were swollen from a pummelling and they had numerous recent bite marks along their flanks. They composed themselves.

"Our father was killed tonight," said one.

"Boxer said he was a dissident!" wailed the second.

"Our father was loyal to Emperor Morellius from the day he was born to the second they killed him," the other added bitterly. "He died with nothing but praise and adulation for the Emperor on his lips..."

The two of them fell silent.

"We know who you are," the first one whispered after a moment.

"We know what you do," the second concurred.

Jack tensed up. "Yes. I'm a courtier too..."

"No," said the first, shaking his head.

"You're from the haven!" the second hissed.

Jack laughed uncomfortably. "Bullshit!"

"No, no, we know it's true," they both agreed.

"And we want out."

"Take us to the haven."

"We'll fight for you."

"We want Boxer to pay."

"We want Morellius dead..."

Jack hesitated. Perhaps they were telling the truth. But perhaps they had just as much to gain from reporting a traitor such as himself. What was of more concern is how they knew he was involved with the haven.

"Look, okay," he said with a sigh. "But if you're coming, you have to come now. There's no time to return for anyone or anything."

But the two of them looked positively relieved.

"Okay, this way, follow me," said Jack.

He continued up the hill. But he didn't get very far. Which was a fortunate thing, in retrospect. A few minutes later, there was an unnatural rustling in the undergrowth, like ghosts passing through. Then suddenly Boxer and four other courtiers appeared and surrounded them in a circle.

"What's going on?" he snarled.

The two bucks began to quiver and whimper, and in that moment Jack knew they had been telling the truth. But now it was too late.

"I caught these two trying to defect to the enemy," he said.

The two rabbits fell instantly silent at his apparent betrayal.

"Did they now?" said Boxer. "And just after we've given you the beatings of your lives, too, from the looks of it. How disappointing..."

"W-we... we... we..." one of them said.

"I think he needs a piss!" Boxer crowed.

The other four courtiers all laughed cruelly. One, a particularly large, scarred rabbit named Herman, cocked his leg and urinated on the buck from behind. The other courtiers all laughed at this as well. Jack stayed quiet.

"Where exactly were you hoping to find the enemy?" Boxer asked.

Neither buck replied, so Herman swiped one in the back. He winced, as the congealed black bite marks along his spine split open and bled.

"The... the h-haven..." he mumbled.

Jack tightened up. These bucks would be too easy to break.

"The haven, eh?" said Boxer. "And where's that?"

"We won't tell!" cried one of the bucks.

Stop glancing at me, Jack kept saying in his head. Stop glancing at me!

"I see," Boxer trilled, raising an eyebrow.

"Shall I take them back for interrogation and torture?" Jack asked Boxer, with enough emphasis on that final word that he hoped the two bucks would get the idea and quit telling Boxer all the secrets he wanted to know.

"Now that sounds like an excellent idea, Jack," Boxer agreed.

Jack relaxed a bit, until Boxer spoke again.

"Take Herman with you..."

"Oh, no, I think I can manage these-"

"Take Herman with you."

This wasn't what Jack had planned. Boxer and the other three courtiers swept away to look for more potential terrorists whilst he and Herman began shepherding the two prisoners down the hill. He knew now that if these poor bucks were submitted to the same torture techniques he himself had perfected on others, then soon every rabbit at Roadkill Turnpike would know he was a traitor.

Worst still, Boxer would know where to find the haven.

He had no choice with what he had to do.

Herman had a vicious streak. He liked to trip the two bucks over and then bash them around the head every time they faltered. He then strode ahead and left Jack to nip them from behind until they started running again.

The two bucks were sobbing as they were led to inevitable agonising deaths at the hands of their fellow rabbits. They looked at Jack, betrayed as they were, but to their credit, none of them blew his cover to Herman.

Jack waited for the right moment.

Every time Herman tripped them up, they took longer and longer to get to their feet again. There was an increasing window in which Jack was close enough and alone enough to whisper quickly to them both.

"RUN!" was what he whispered.

The two bucks glanced at each other a final time, but didn't stop to think twice. They turned round and began bolting up the hill.

Jack could only give them a second.

"Herman!" he cried. "They're escaping!"

Herman spun round and ran back.

"Jack, what are you waiting for? Let's go!"

"I can't run," Jack lied. "You go."

"They're getting away! I can't catch both!"

Jack swallowed. "Then kill them..."

"Ha ha! Better dead than free, eh?"

And with that, he ran after and killed them.

"I do wonder," Jack muttered to himself.

NOTES:
One of the longest chapters so far (it surpasses 4000 words), but also one of the most successful. I think this style, with numerous episodes to a single chapter rather than just a single event extended to fill 2500 words, is more suitable to this kind of story. I think if I ever rewrote it, I'd cut out all the extraneous material by compacting it in this way.

As with the last chapter, written in bursts of 500-1500 word bursts over several days. Jack's hard decision at the end came out of nowhere, as did the hare colony collapse at the beginning. Those first 1500 words were written in a sudden burst of inspiration immediately after seeing "The Return Of The King". Yes, I sat for four hours in a cinema, got back, and then sat down for another hour writing. The collapse of the burrow was very much inspired by the disintegration of Mordor, especially the bit outside the Black Gate.