At first, those behind were enraged. There were almost seven hundred that hadn't got a look in yet. Their paws were only wet with blood because the hillside was drenched in it and they'd had to splatter through. But word quickly passed back from those one hundred leading that there was nobody left to kill.

The opposite hillside was empty...

Their fury rapidly turned into confusion. Murmurs of one sort or another circulated around the crowd. Had they really defeated the enemy that easily? A few of the more stupid rabbits (i.e. captive breds) began to believe it.

By the time Boxer heard what had happened, most of those in front of him were already celebrating their victory. But Boxer had more savvy. It wasn't that he gave particular credence to the militaristic intelligence of the haven's strategists, it was just that he'd been sent to fight an army of natural born traitors, and all the rabbits his army had killed so far had been captive bred...

And nobody else seemed to have noticed.

"Secure the hillside!" he ordered.

Deep beneath the surface of the haven, meanwhile, those that were to take no part in this battle were singing Christmas carols with Jesus. This included Mopsy and Jack, much to Christ's roused suspicion. None of them really understood the words they were singing, but Jesus assured them they were about him.

Though truth be told, there were precious few hiding in the depths of the haven's cavernous interior. A few women and children, but the women were heavily pregnant and the children mere infants. Women who weren't pregnant and children who had teeth sharp enough had joined the fight. But everyone who was waiting silently in the tunnels for the next attack was there by choice.

The way the hares had restructured the haven, there was one large tunnel just below the hilltop, and two rows of three spread out across the hillside. This large tunnel at the top was defended the heaviest, as enemy forces would reach it first. The two tunnels at the bottom were defended least. These both fell under the jurisdiction of Peter's rebel forces and Mont'mar's small hare army.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Peter was standing in line with all the other rabbits. Mark, Tom and Benjamin were there too. They could see a sliver of silvery moonlight shining down through the tunnel entrance, which, given the hares' changes, was actually below them. The enemy would have to run up inside the tunnel to meet them. Everyone held their breath when the invaders fell silent.

"What's going on up there?" Benjamin wondered.

"They're wondering where we are," Peter mused.

But then Morellius' army began to move again, which wiped the smirk off his face. Even down here, they could feel the vibrations through the soil. Peter both pitied those in the tunnels above, and wanted to be with them...

Boxer's army swept down the hillside with ease. The climb up the other side had been sluggish at best, but now the forward flank picked up momentum on the charge down. Amidst the quickening throng, Boxer reached the moonlit hilltop just as the first wave below him was swarming back on itself. They'd found the first tunnel. Boxer saw them surge in as if the tunnel was sucking them up.

Not far behind that first wave was Basil, another courtier, whose battalion had lost out on the opportunity to lead the initial assault - something for which Basil was now glad. His men bounded into the tunnel with a triumphant cry.

Benjamin would have balked. Somehow, he had got separated from Peter and the others and was now stuck in a queue for inevitable slaughter, squashed between captive breds on all sides. He let out a loud cry of protest, but all the others thought it was a rallying call and joined in. They didn't hear him whimper.

And then the invading horde collided with them.

Benjamin heard the screams and smelt the blood immediately. The blood made the air musky, and humid with its warmth. In the gaps between those rabbits between him and the fighting, he could see the almighty clash of fur, flesh, claw and bone in momentary flashes. And for some reason, he seemed to be edging toward it. His comrades had started the drive forward straight away.

Suddenly the big tortoise-shell rabbit right in front of Benjamin reared up, and Benjamin shrank back, fearing he was about to be flattened. But then the captive bred started boxing. The fight had already reached him! And then, when the tortoise-shell rabbit was gutted mid-fight, Benjamin was pushed forward.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut and struck out with his paws. At first he hit nothing but air, but then he felt resistance beneath his claws. But he dared not open his eyes. He only did that when he almost got toppled from behind.

There were three rabbits squirming right in front of him. They'd been slashed across the face and were tearing at their bleeding eyes.

A couple of rabbits from behind weren't going to miss this chance. They shouldered past Benjamin and laid into two of them.

That left a third for Benjamin. He pounced. He could feel the poor thing shaking with fright and making the exact same cry of protest Benjamin himself had made. But now Benjamin knew why the others had misunderstood. He felt the rush of righteous cruelty empower his every muscle and limb.

In a single gnash, he tore through the enemy's larynx. Then he looked up, gave that self-same cry again, and leapt back into the fray.

It wasn't that Boxer's men were being pushed back out of the tunnels, it was just that they were making no more progress. His army had stopped swarming down the hill and was now massing around this one tunnel.

"Look for other ways in!" he ordered.

A few seconds later, he heard his own command echoed back from both sides of the swelling crowd. Then it began to split up.

At the bottom of the hill, Peter and the others in his tunnel listened in silence to the sounds of war raging all around them. Squeezed in beside him, Peter could feel Tom's heart beating hard and fast. He turned and smiled encouragingly. On the other side of Tom, Mark gave Peter a one-eyed knowing look.

When they saw the first shadow break across the silvery moonlight, almost everybody in the tunnel flinched. Then there was a second, and everybody held their breath. They were listening for the running feet.

The first rabbit poked its head into the tunnel entrance a few seconds later, having run down the hill, spotted this mysterious dark hole, stopped, and come back again to investigate. It saw the wall of anxious faces awaiting it, and yelped and drew back. Then a few seconds later, a dozen more replaced it.

As with the tunnel above them, the rabbits and hares in Peter's tunnel began moving forward before the horde reached them. This made the first collision particularly brutal, and Peter found himself squashed.

At first, the rabbits in front fell fast. They put up a typically defensive defence, whilst Peter knew the best form of defence was just to kill every motherfucker you could before they got a chance at killing you first...

It was a lesson you could only learn from experience. Not one you could learn from your own mistake, because if you made it, you were dead. Best to learn from the mistakes of others, like those rabbits second in line for slaughter.

The enemy surged forward again. They swelled in numbers until there was room for no more in the tunnel. But still more came, clambering over the top of those in front and bouncing along with hate and bloodlust in their eyes.

This time, the rabbits and hares in front of Peter aimed down. It wasn't a tactic anybody had taught them, it was more an instinctual thing.

As the horde charged in, the rabbits and hares holding the line went under. The enemy was caught unawares, tripping, flipping and generally flying over as they were forced on from behind. They were left sprawling and flailing in the tunnel. And with a cry, Peter, Tom et al stormed forth to finish them off.

Those beneath were trampled to their deaths, but now there was a further obstacle between Peter's men and the attacking horde.

All in all, throughout all seven tunnels under attack, the hares' plan was working. Boxer's army was still largely stuck on the surface, queuing up to do their bit, whilst unbeknownst to them, those below were dying in their droves. The hares' redesign of the tunnels, to have all the entrances an upward slope, meant Boxer's men had already lost their forward momentum before they even encountered somebody to kill. This gave the natural borns in Peter's tunnel a distinct advantage, but it made the naturally stronger hares and captive breds even more formidable.

Unfortunately, this was not lost on Boxer. Intent as he was to stay as far from the fighting as possible, he stood back and began noticing things. Like how more rabbits were flocking to the largest tunnel just beneath the hilltop, yet it had the shortest queue. Now, that could mean two things, Boxer realised. Either his men were making the best progress there, and penetrating deep into the warren, or that was the best defended tunnel, and his men were dying at a worrying rate.

He wasn't blind to the cheekiness of the rebels' tactics, either. The enemy was drawing his men into tight passages where they could fight a less even battle. But what could he do? There were up to eight hundred soldiers still bearing down on the haven and as soon as it had begun, this battle was beyond his control. He could only stand back now and hope sheer numbers would see him to victory.

Actually, Boxer's summation of the hilltop tunnel was becoming increasingly inaccurate. Yes, it still was the best defended, but also, the enemy was making a concerning level of progress. Adolf, who had been fighting paw to paw himself for a good ten minutes now, knew that as soon as the invading horde pushed his defenders back to where the sloping tunnel levelled out, his advantage would be severely diminished. And slowly, that was beginning to happen.

Adolf dealt his current opponent a fatal blow to the neck, then withdrew breathless from the fighting. Two others took his place.

"Are we winning, sir?" somebody chirped.

Adolf looked round fiercely. Somebody else was having a rest from the fighting, hiding behind the corpse of the tortoise-shell rabbit. In comparison, the little natural born was dwarfed by it. Benjamin was his name.

"You," Adolf wheezed. "I have a job for you."

"Does it involve killing?" Benjamin chirped.

"No. No killing."

"Oh... What do I do? What do I do?"

"Take a message..."

Then he leant in close and gave Benjamin his message.

Peter's men were having an even harder time of it. They had slowly begun to pull back; an unavoidable manoeuvre, the enemy was too strong. Already there were so many corpses in the tunnel that only one combatant from each side could take on the other at a time. This was a hopeless strategy. Peter knew he was sending each rabbit to his death. Perhaps they would win one bout, but only one rabbit won a second consecutive victory, and died before he could get a third.

Each time one of their men fell, the next two invaders in line dragged away the corpse whilst the third bounded in to take over. But each time one of Peter's men fell, they had to leave the body where it was and fight round it.

There was a neat line of fallen comrades against the wall, showing Peter just how far this strategy had led to them being forced back further and further into the tunnel. The passage had already levelled out. If the enemy kept progressing at this rate, the tunnel would open out into one of the haven's new cavernous interiors. And then fighting underground would be like fighting overground...

Suddenly Tom piped up above the war cries coming from both sides. He was screaming right in Peter's ear, but Peter barely heard a word he said. Fortunately, that one word he did hear he understood: "Benjamin!"

Peter shoved past the line of anxious rabbits waiting to take their turn at fighting and headed deeper into the haven. Mark and Tom pushed through behind him. Every few seconds, the queue shuffled forward as another fight was lost. Before they reached the end of the tunnel, they reached the end of the queue...

But sure enough, Benjamin was there waiting.

"Adolf has a plan!" he shouted.

"What plan?!" Peter hollered back.

But the din was too loud. So Peter leant in close.

"That's suicidal!" he said, his eyes furiously wide.

"What is?" said Mark and Tom together.

"But it might just work... Come on!"

And then, with a final glance at the dwindling queue of doomed souls, Peter set off into the heart of the haven. The others followed.

Back on the surface, Boxer was feeling pretty good. He'd had reports from five of the seven tunnels now that the haven's defences were slowly weakening and that his forces were close to breaking through them. And all this, he chortled to himself, with three-quarters of his men still above ground!

Just then, a mighty cheer went up from the bottom of the hill. That could only mean one thing, Boxer realised (as did everyone else).

They'd broken through...

All of a sudden, there was a downward surge. Boxer was caught up in it, and it was useless to fight against it. Ahead of them, men were flowing into one of the tunnels at the base of the hill without any sign of resistance inside.

Behind them, others were abandoning harder fights in the higher tunnels and joining the crowd as it poured down the hillside.

By the time Boxer was strong enough to stand his ground and escape the sheer tide of rabbits, he was halfway toward the bottom.

He stopped to catch his breath and turned round. No longer were there lines of men waiting to trickle into the other tunnels. Indeed, there were rabbits coming out of that tunnel entrance at the top of the hill en masse.

It took Boxer a few moments to realise.

At first he expected the numbers to drop off pretty quickly. After all, there couldn't be that many still left fighting up there...

Then he had the amusing thought that his forces had so overwhelmed the haven they had reached the top and were coming out again...

And then he was suddenly struck dumb, frozen to the spot. He didn't have that many captive breds in his army. And not a single hare...

That's because it wasn't his army...

The enemy had double-backed!

Boxer looked at his poor army at the bottom of the hill. So vain, so drunk on the glory of a victory that wasn't, so oblivious to what was coming up behind. They didn't hear a word Boxer shouted. Oh, what was the use?

He began running toward them.

This, Peter thought, is a stupid idea. But he thought it whilst bounding down the hillside surrounded by over six hundred of his comrades. He had to give credit where it was due to Adolf's do-or-die, last ditch strategy. Adolf was nearby. As was Mont'mar and Ball'rdo, Mark and Tom, plus Benjamin.

Emperor Morellius' army was cut off. So far their advance had been based on marching forth, controlling everything behind. But now they were isolated, with the rebel army behind, and only the forest below to run to. And most of them hadn't even noticed they were about to be attacked yet...

The collision, when it came, was the most brutal yet. It had to be. The idea was to shatter enemy lines in one single blow. Unfortunately, such was the force of that blow, that many on both sides were instantly crushed.

By the time the fighting even started proper, Peter and his comrades were already clambering over the bodies of their dead.

Peter fought side by side with Mark and Tom, neither showing any signs of weariness either. He hadn't been counting kills, but as he scratched, tore, bit and pummelled, he realised it had ceased to matter.

His thoughts turned briefly to Mopsy.

Poor Boxer. Poor Boxer. There was only one rabbit thinking this. And that was Boxer himself. He was fighting. He was actually fighting!

Boxer had never fought in his life. He'd always manipulated someone else into doing that for him. Now he had no choice. Here he was, amidst his supposedly mighty army, fighting for his life. He didn't even know how to fight, yet he found it came naturally to him. The urge and ability to kill was obviously locked deep within his unconscious. It scared him that he never knew.

Again and again, Peter struck down those around him. He killed without mercy. He was drenched in blood. Yet as it evaporated in the cool night air, it refreshed him. If only the bloody stuff would stay out of his eyes!

About then, the Emperor's army finally managed to start resisting. The last of the troops realised what was going on and poured from that tunnel at the bottom of the hill. The rebel army's progress was halted. The more vicious combat began. All of a sudden, the sheer number of them looked a lot more intimidating to Peter than they had from the top of the hill. He gulped and fought on.

Mark and Tom had formed a double act. Mark would leap on the back of the target and Tom would tear out its throat. It worked.

Mont'mar was also honing her fighting skills. To Ball'rdo, she looked to be enjoying it far more than was regally proper.

And then somewhere in the middle of the fight, Benjamin Bunny tripped over the corpse of a fallen foe and knocked himself out.

Something unexpected was happening, which Peter only noticed when he retreated from the front line to rescue poor Benjamin.

He looked around, and noticed that even though their forward flank was about twenty feet ahead of him, it was also twenty feet away both left and right. Their forces were boring a passage right through the enemy! At first, a gratifying discovery. But then he realised that they were going to over-stretch themselves. Yes, they had Morellius' men on the defensive, but they could still close in from both sides and cut the rebel army in two. All it would take was an observant leader...

And normally, that would have been Boxer, far more suited to standing off to the side and watching from a distance than splashing about in the blood of a hundred dead rabbits as he scratched and scraped and bit his way through attacker after attacker. These rebels reminded him of his own men.

He was particularly proud of himself when he single-handedly killed a captive bred. But then he was left without a fight. The frontline had overtaken him. The enemy's forward flanks were now behind him and there was an empty space all around. The enemy was driving a wedge through the centre of his army!

Blinking through the blood and sweat, a trembling Boxer saw another rabbit, another natural born, standing catching his breath. The blood on his coat shimmered in the light of the moon whenever it didn't dip behind the clouds.

"You!" said the rabbit hoarsely.

There was about thirty feet between them.

Boxer didn't recognise him at first, and it wasn't because of the blood. In the end, Boxer worked out who it was by a method of elimination. After all, the vast majority of rabbits who had a run in with him didn't live to remember.

"Peter Rabbit..."

The name came out of Boxer's lips, direct from his subconscious. But then it all came flooding back. His mouth curled into a sneer.

"Find your daughter?"

"Let's finish this..."

Peter came running into full view. Boxer would have happily killed him there and then, but all of a sudden, Basil came running from nowhere. He charged into Peter and the pair of them went tumbling over and over.

"I'll save you!" he was saying. "I'll save you!"

He was even saying it when his mouth was full of blood, after Peter bit through his throat. But no sound came out. Then no breath, either.

Perhaps this would have to end another day, thought Boxer. He retreated a few feet, and before long he was swallowed up by the battle again.

When Peter got to his feet, he found Boxer had vanished. He spat out some blood. Perhaps this would have to end another day, he thought.

The battle had been raging a full hour. It didn't seem like that to any of the combatants. They fought on, through gore and exhaustion, and in some cases, the deaths of all their friends, until nothing that really mattered was left. Nothing, that is, except for victory. This spurned some on to greater efforts. But to many, on both sides, what was to happen next would decide the victors.

Peter hadn't rejoined the fighting. He'd finally found Benjamin, not only safe beneath the corpse of a hare that had fallen on top of him, but fast asleep as well. He nudged him awake. It was Benjamin who spotted it first.

"Peter! Petey! Pete! Lookie!" he cried.

Wearily, Peter looked up. And what he saw, what Benjamin had seen, was a clear path right from where they were, to the trees at the bottom of the hill.

"I don't believe it..." Peter said under his breath.

The Emperor's army had been cleaved in two!

"Now that's what I call divide and conquer..."

Boxer saw the perfect opportunity to close in from both sides.

Unfortunately, that's not what the two halves of his army saw. They saw the other half being driven further and further away, further apart; and by a rebel army twice the size of each half. And no, it didn't occur to these tired, panic-stricken rabbits that an army twice the size of each half was simply an even match...

"Hold your positions!" cried Boxer. "Stand fast!"

But by that time he was one of the few doing so. If he'd ever seen the sea, he would have thought the enemy like a wave. The nearest flank, an unbroken straight line of hopping rabbits, raced towards him. They were relentless. Those who tried to stem their progress just vanished beneath their feet.

"Oh, fuck it," said Boxer. "Retreat!"

Then he turned round and made for the trees himself.

Deep underground, Jesus was telling some young children the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were positively thrilled. During the battle, two of the women had given birth, and Mopsy was helping them nurse their litters. She'd already had two baby rabbits named after her. So had Jesus.

Jack sat apart from the others. He'd spent so long nervously chewing his claws that a couple of them were bitten down to the quick. He listened to the sounds of battle, staring up at the roof of the cavern, as if picturing what was going on above them. Every time there was a lull in fighting, Mopsy looked over.

She was looking over at him now.

"This could be it..." Jack said.

By which he meant the end of the battle. Whether that also meant victory, or whether it meant defeat for the haven, none of them knew.

Jesus got up. "Stay here," he told the others.

But Jack followed anyway. So of course, Mopsy went too.

They headed into the tunnels, and it wasn't long before they came across the first bodies. As they hurried past, Mopsy couldn't help but wince at the empathic pain she felt for some of the horrendous injuries she witnessed. It didn't matter that some of the yawning wounds were on the bodies of the enemy...

Eventually they came out into the moonlight, and before the moon slipped behind the clouds once again, they saw what had happened. And from the top of the hill, they could see everything. And everything was still.

The battle was indeed over. The hillside was littered with the dead and the quietly dying, hundreds upon hundreds of them. The slope was slippery with blood; the green grass discoloured brown. There was already a stench. This was a vision of apocalypse, and Mopsy was struck by how calm and peaceful it was.

"It's the end of the world," she said.

For a while, they saw no movement. Jack surveyed the hill, but everywhere he looked all he could see was death. If he stared at one corpse long enough, perhaps he could will it to move. But perhaps it just wasn't dead. Yet.

"Down there," said Jesus softly.

They followed his paw. He was pointing to the bottom of the hill. There seemed to be a large number of bodies amassed there, but when the moon came back out from behind the clouds, Mopsy saw they were all still alive.

And she was pretty sure one was Peter.

"Father!" she cried as she ran.

It took a good ten minutes for the survivors to gather. Some had got carried away and continued the chase into the forest. Some hadn't come back. Others wandered the hillside, dazed, looking for friends and family. It was just as painful to discover they'd died fighting for the other side. Mont'mar and Ball'rdo went and identified all the hares. Her colony was so diminished now that the hare queen could name each of the seven that died. Eventually, however, everyone was drawn to Peter and Adolf by the loud, triumphant cheering they were getting.

Jesus pushed his way through to the centre of the crowd and Mopsy and Jack followed in his wake. As the rabbits realised who it was, they cheered all the more loudly. Adolf was lapping it up. He kept raising his paw in salute.

When Jesus reached the front, the crowd erupted. It was a roar of approval they would have heard on the other side of the hill.

"We won the war!" he bellowed.

Finding themselves ungratefully sidelined, Peter and Mont'mar exchanged glances. Peter shook his head, and kept shaking his head, and was determined not to stop until someone damn well asked him why.

Eventually, that someone was Adolf.

"You disagree, sir?" he asked.

The crowd fell silent. Peter wasn't alone in his uneasiness at how the dynamics of the alliance had shifted to focus on Christ. Even some of the haven's rabbits had been converted by this victory against all odds, for surely God must have played a helping hand. However, they all recognised what an important part Peter's leadership of the haven had played, and fell silent for him.

"We may have won this battle, but we haven't won this war." Surely a truism that would become as much a cliché in rabbit warfare as it has our own. "Why, do you see the body of Emperor Morellius on this battlefield?"

A disgruntled mutter mingled in the crowd. Peter was well aware that he was appearing the killjoy, sapping the glory out of victory.

"What are you saying?" Jesus snapped.

"That Morellius still sits in power over that hill," Peter said quickly. "But that his armies lie decimated, halved, weak and demoralised. That we now have a choice and an opportunity. An opportunity to defeat him once and for all..."

The muttering stopped, but the silence said a lot.

"You want to launch an attack, Pete?" said Jack.

"Yes. And soon. Tomorrow if not today. Any later than that and Morellius will have rebuilt his army. And then we're finished. We won't survive another attack. So this is how it is. The opportunity is here. The choice is now."

He got a spontaneous, unanimous cheer.

A cheer that was heard on the other side of the hill, as the remnants of Boxer's fine army crawled home, broken and defeated. They unexpectedly came from the forest, having followed the A414 home. Civilians came from their burrows to see, and watched in silent horror as their brave fighters limped past.

Boxer found his own way back. He didn't want to see anyone, and he didn't want anyone to see him. He went straight to the Emperor.

Emperor Morellius was alone and waiting.

Boxer tried to stand up proudly before his leader, but his legs shook and his ribs hurt. "Your Majesty..." he began slowly, painfully.

"I've heard, Boxer," the Emperor sighed.

"Oh." Boxer lowered his head.

"I wonder how long people will be calling me their majesty," said Morellius grumpily. "My once mighty empire seems to be shrinking fast."

"Sir, today was unprecedented!" Boxer protested.

"Was it? I gather the captive breds have joined them."

Boxer blinked. "Yes. Yes, we weren't expecting that."

"Weren't you?" The Emperor shrugged.

"We... underestimated the enemy," Boxer admitted.

"Or, perhaps," Morellius mused. "I overestimated you..."

Boxer gasped. "Sir!"

"My army is halved," Morellius ranted. "You bring me nothing but defeat and excuses, Boxer. I don't need that..."

"Your Highness, they only won because they threw everything at us. They had women and children fighting on their side, for fuck's sake! Every single one of them was fighting and they still only just beat us." He paused. "Now, if we do the same, if we throw everything we've got, well, they're fucking history!"

"You killed half our women..." Morellius murmured.

"We still have hundreds of civilians, though..."

Boxer saw a familiar glint return to the Emperor's eyes.

"One more chance, Boxer," Morellius growled. "One more chance to prove me wrong about you. I want victory. I want their heads..."

"And I'll bring them to you, Your Majesty!" said Boxer.

"You better. Because you won't live to fail me again."

NOTES:
The longest chapter so far at 5000 words, which is double the length of the very first chapter. And, probably, too long. However, I didn't want to break up the momentum by throwing in a chapter break haphazardly. Chapters are a form of editorial fascism, anyway, for readers who need to be told when to stop reading. My final feelings on this chapter are even more polarised than those on the last. I think different parts of this section range from the plain woeful to the merely adequate. I'm running out of synonyms for "charge" just like I ran out of ways to describe a plain old rabbit burrow in those early chapters. Frustratingly, I don't think a rewrite would help. This just isn't the kind of thing I think I want to write. Still, the story needs be told.

I deleted the part where Jesus Christ gave Adolf the Nazi salute...