This had become something of a No Man's Land in the course of fighting. The grass was soaked in blood, littered with corpses of all description, and had become a suitable buffer for both sides to glare across at each other.

The sun rose reluctantly. It was a grey, muggy dawn, overcast and hazy, the sun itself nowhere to be seen. There was a slight wind, enough to carry the smell of blood across all of Roadkill Turnpike. It was also cold.

Rabbits and hares and other mammals that would never play a part in the fate of this corner of the world shivered in their burrows. It had been getting progressively warmer for weeks, with spring promising to appear soon, but today it was much colder, an unnaturally chilly morning; a winter hangover.

To those with a sense of the portentous, this would have been seen as ominous. But rabbits aren't creatures that fear much for the future. There are too many things for them to worry about in the here and now.

Like the danger your kids were in...

"Mopsy, look, he's gotta be around here somewhere."

Mopsy was distraught, and Peter wasn't helping. He was too tired to help her search for Jack, and was trying hard not to snap at her.

"I left him right here!" she kept crying.

They were standing in that burrow near the base of the hill. She was walking around and around it, as if she might find him hiding in the shadows, and he would jump out and surprise her and then everything would be okay...

"Would he have gone outside?" Peter asked.

"He was hurt! He wouldn't have!"

"But what if he thought we were losing?"

"No. No. He was too badly hurt."

Peter sighed. "Mopsy, look, the captive breds didn't get down here, so they couldn't have dragged him out. Either he left of his own accord or somebody else helped him out. You can't have checked everywhere, surely."

"I have! I have!" she wailed.

And she had. After returning to the burrow and finding him gone, she'd run around the haven, calling for him. The tunnels were near abandoned. She had searched the entire haven before the end of the battle.

"If he was here, I would have found him..."

Peter nodded. "Then he must have gone outside."

"But why? Why would he? Why?"

"I don't know," Peter admitted. "But if I know Jack, then I wouldn't be surprised if he's been up to something. I wouldn't worry yourself so, Mopsy dear. He can handle himself. Even with an injured leg..."

She bit her lip and looked pained.

"Dad, I love him... There, I said it."

Peter smiled. "I know you do."

Around mid-morning, after restless sleeps, Mark and Tom went back up to the surface to take over sentry duties from Benjamin and several others. Benjamin looked drawn and emaciated. As he trudged away, they realised he'd lost his spark. It really is bad when even the manic see no reason for cheer.

Mark and Tom stood side by side, looking over at the enemy lines and their captive bred counterparts milling about just fifty feet away. Neither brother spoke, but as they stood there, Tom started chuckling to himself.

"What's up with you?" Mark said.

"Nothing," Tom said, his face straightening.

"Please, Tom, if you've got something to laugh about, do share it," Mark told him. "Goodness knows I could do with some of that..."

Tom smiled. "I was just remembering..."

"Remembering what?"

"Alexander."

"Oh?"

"He was a prick, wasn't he?"

"Oh, yes."

"They all were."

"Hmm, most of them, yeah."

"I keep thinking about that lot," Tom said, chewing some loose skin off his bottom lip. "So caught up in themselves. With their forty-metre limits and council of elders and authorised exits only please. I can't help but laugh. They're all oblivious to the universe. It's almost as if they impose that boundary on themselves, so that they can pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, because if it did, being larger than all of them, it would control them. Make those forty-metres the entirety of their world, and well, they can control that, can't they? Arseholes..."

Mark nodded, but didn't laugh.

"Do you miss it?" he asked.

"Fuck it, I think I do..."

"So much simpler, wasn't it?"

Tom sighed and nodded. "What's the worst we ever got there? A bit of a pummelling from Hazel or one of the others?"

"Yeah." Mark looked down.

"But nobody was killing each other," Tom cried. "The worst we ever did was steal a bit of this or that. Even exile was better than... this. Who are we kidding that Alexander or even Nicholas was as bad as Emperor Morellius? They were pricks, yeah, sure, but they weren't evil, they didn't do evil things. They didn't start wars; they didn't even know what wars were. And when Pete came out with that shit, they were against it all along. Listen to me, I'm almost starting to sound like I think they were right, after all. Oh, I don't know. Perhaps they were. And perhaps that's why they were in charge. And why they deserved to be..."

"Yeah, well," Mark said. "We came here for Mopsy, not to fight this. And this wasn't Pete's idea, either. We all just kinda... fell into it."

"We're always falling into things, you and me."

"Yes." Mark grinned. "But that's life. You stumble through, you deal with what you get, and maybe if you live long enough, you learn that it could all have gone differently, all gone better, if you'd only known what you can't possibly have known if you hadn't made those mistakes in the first place..."

"Ooh, very profound," Tom quipped.

Mark chuckled. "Oh, piss off, Tom."

Shortly before noon, the half dozen captive-bred sentinels patrolling their side of No Man's Land in pairs disappeared. It was Tom who noticed.

"Now what's going on?" He sighed.

"Ten to one it's nothing good," Mark murmured.

"Maybe they gave up. Hey, maybe they're under attack!"

"Hmm..." went Mark.

Plausible, he thought. The captive breds were still enemies with Emperor Morellius, after all, even if they had attacked the haven first. Mark didn't put it past Morellius to make the captive breds fight a war on two fronts...

"Go and find Peter," he ordered Tom.

Tom did as he was told. Mark stayed where he was, watching the enemy lines for any sign of movement. Soon he turned to see Peter climbing the hill. He looked as haggard as Mark felt himself. He had Mopsy with him. She was upset. Tom brought up the rear. They'd picked up Ball'rdo along the way too.

At about the same time as Peter reached the top of the hill, a cry went up from the other sentries and they came running to join Mark.

He turned sharply, as Peter and the others rushed to his side as well. They all looked out over No Man's Land. Mopsy gasped, but for the others, what they saw no longer shocked them, they'd been expecting it too long...

The much-diminished captive-bred army was on the move. The first wave had just broached the crest of the hill and was marching steadily across No Man's Land in a line, about forty rabbits across. Behind them, the second wave rose, and behind them, the third, heading straight for Peter and the others.

But then came the fourth wave, and this time Mopsy wasn't the only one who gasped. The fourth wave was entirely natural born.

Everyone realised what had happened.

"Pete, all but the middle and bottom two tunnels have been caved in," Ball'rdo reported hopefully. "Just like you wanted."

"Thanks, Ball'rdo," said Peter.

But nobody took their eyes off the enemy.

"Not sure it will make much difference this time," he concluded.

Mark stared across the shrinking gulf between him and his foes. "How many of us are left?" he asked distantly.

Nobody answered.

Peter finally turned to his daughter. "Mopsy," he said lightly. "I think you should go and wait for Jack in the burrow."

"I'm staying," she said, not meeting his gaze. She was glaring across No Man's Land, her jaw set and her brow furrowed.

Mark and Tom glanced over slowly.

"He'll come back," Mark told her.

"He'll wonder where you are," added Tom.

She swallowed. "He's gone," she whispered.

Nobody knew enough to disagree.

"Then go and wait for us," Peter said.

Mopsy didn't know what it was. Something in his voice; the inflections, the tone, the way he came to the end of his sentence but also trailed off, as if he meant to say something else, but in the end, didn't.

"Don't be long," she murmured.

Peter turned and watched her go.

News had spread quickly. There was a massive crowd climbing the hill, which enveloped Mopsy as she climbed down. Peter watched the rabbits pick their way gingerly up the bloodied slope, around the bodies. They looked determined, dutiful, as if this was nothing more than a necessary domestic chore that was slightly irritating, but all the better for getting over and done with quickly.

The haven's forces stopped looking massive when they reached the hilltop, lined up beside Peter, and faced the enemy. "Is that it?" was Peter's first thought. "It can't be," his second. "It is," the third. And when he turned back toward No Man's Land, the enemy was half as close again. But still they poured over the hilltop, their ranks at least ten deep already, and still coming...

"I listened to Jesus preach once," Tom muttered.

Nobody turned. But they all listened, all silent.

"Apparently, there's another life awaiting rabbits after death, a better life, where everyone's happy and there's no pain..."

"I hope he was right." Mark sighed.

There were muted mutterings of agreement.

"I don't," Peter announced loudly.

Heads turned, eyes turned, all at Peter.

"Because if he was," he continued, breaking formation and walking briskly along the front line. "That makes this exceedingly pointless!"

Peter went to the end of the front line, addressed them there, then headed back to the other end. Over six hundred eyes followed him.

"I don't know about any of you," is what he said. "But I don't do pointless things. Jesus said life's better after death? I say he was full of shit! Sounds like a lie Emperor Morellius would use. It doesn't matter if your life's fucking awful, because be good, do as I say, and you'll go to paradise when you die..."

Rabbits agreed as he walked past a second time.

"Fuck that, is what I say. If I thought death was paradise, I would have killed myself as soon as I'd realised. But I don't. You all know by now why I came to Roadkill Turnpike. I came for my daughter. I used to think she was dead. Just like the rest of my family, robbed from me by humanity. I used to want to kill man. Not because I wanted to speed them on their way to paradise, but because I wanted to deny them what they'd denied me. Paradise here, in this life..."

Across No Man's Land, the enemy stopped.

Not that many of the haven noticed...

"I don't fight for glory, honour or victory. My idea of paradise isn't a world where my enemies lie as carcasses in the sun. My idea of paradise is myself, my daughter, living in a burrow, safely. That's all. But them, if their idea of paradise over there is a world without me and my daughter, then that's why I fight. Because if I didn't, if I let their paradise come to pass, if I turned my back on the truth just to save it, then I would condemn us all to this same fate anyway!"

The rabbits of the haven began cheering.

"We are free men!" Peter announced, getting louder. "We could never live their way again. We have tasted water from the rivers of liberty and it is too sweet for us to return to drinking from the muddy puddles of Roadkill Turnpike! But if we can't stop them, if we don't, then maybe Jesus was right, after all. We really would be better off dead than living in the Emperor's paradise!"

He was almost screaming it by the end.

But the response he got was even louder.

"Good speech," Mark whispered, winking wryly as Peter returned to his place and stepped back into formation. "Now comes the hard part..."

Peter took a deep breath, nodding, staring ahead, and when he exhaled, it was staggered. He was pumped, primed, abuzz with nervous energy. His eyes, previously heavy with sleep, were wide and seeing clearly again. And he could see Adolf, standing directly opposite, just waiting for the right moment...

Then the final battle for Roadkill Turnpike began.

Adolf stepped out in front of the captive breds and raised his paw, just like he had when leading the haven against Morellius. An unnatural silence fell over Roadkill Turnpike. Then he brought his paw down again.

Peter lost sight of him as Adolf's troops surged past, but he stayed where he was. Adolf was using the exact same tactics again, he realised. The captive breds would take the brunt of the haven's resistance, then the Emperor's forces would sweep in behind and quash the weakened haven easily.

"If you can't win a fight, don't lose it!"

And with that advice, Peter led the haven into battle.

As the two sides charged at each other, they stopped being forty rabbits across and became positively triangular as the fastest combatant on each side took point and led the way. Everybody else filed in behind them.

For the haven, this was Ball'rdo. He met his opposite with a cry of guttural ferocity and tore him asunder. Then the rest spilled around him and his fallen foe and collided with each other. It was becoming a predictable sensory explosion of the muggy smell of warm blood, freshly spilled, and the nauseating sounds of horrific injuries at which it was better not to look. Claws flayed flesh, teeth chewed muscle, eyes were plucked from their sockets, arteries spurted...

But for the most part, the rabbits of the haven followed Peter's advice. If they couldn't beat an opponent, it was better to run and find another than to die trying to beat this one. It left Adolf's army a bit bewildered. The haven's rabbits abandoned fights they were losing, joined two-against-one fights they weren't, and left the rest of the captive breds fumbling for a brawl of their own.

Except now the Emperor's natural borns were swarming in from behind, and there were twice as many of them as there were captive breds. The haven could no longer gang up on their opponents. Their opponents ganged up on them. Soon it was back to everybody just fighting everybody else. And that, as with all the previous battles, was the point where Peter lost any tactical control.

He was there, in the thick of it. Ball'rdo, Mark, Tom and countless others he knew he would have recognised, were it not for their bloodied faces, they were all nearby. Occasionally he heard their cries, but didn't look. Every time he turned he saw someone else he knew lying prostrate on the ground. And not every time was it an ally. He found himself up against captive breds he even knew by name, but that didn't stop him smiting them down. He had no choice.

Gradually, the rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike were driving them back. Peter found himself fighting uphill. In fleeing a fight he was losing, he retreated over the crest of the hilltop. Once the enemy had them fighting on the downhill slope, they would soon be fighting over the top of the haven itself.

But what could he do?

Behind Roadkill Turnpike's war machine, Adolf watched without a flicker of emotion as captive-bred numbers were decimated. They'd done their job. That was all that mattered. Now the natural borns would clean up. As part of his deal with Prince Regent Boxer, Adolf had control over them all. Which made him about as powerful as the Prince Regent himself. Which was more powerful than Jesus had ever been - and he was supposed to be the son of the rabbit god!

Once the last of the rebels disappeared from view, driven over the crest of the hilltop by his men, Adolf realised victory was assured. And if he wanted to get his fill of the action, he'd have to hurry or they'd all be dead!

Adolf took advantage of that reverent bubble surrounding him, where no rabbit dared get within a foot of him, and made it to the front line with ease. The rebels were firmly on the retreat now, almost halfway down the hill and fighting a rearguard action. Adolf gave a gleeful squeak and joined in.

The haven had abandoned its tactics of giving up on lost fights. All fights were lost eventually. One foe merged into another without time for breath in between. There were just too many natural borns to hold back. In the midst of it all, Peter, Mark and Tom all looked at each other hopelessly. The haven wasn't being driven anymore so much as it was itself retreating rapidly toward the trees.

Peter hoped Mopsy was no longer in the burrow, waiting for Jack. He'd noted how quickly they'd fallen back over the top of the haven, passing these exits, then these, and now fighting around the bottom two. The rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike smothered this side of the hill with their sheer number. Those caught near the top had started pouring into the middle two exits. Peter had had a grand defence plan based around keeping them open. A waste of time now...

He wanted to hold this position as long as possible, at least until any stragglers left inside the haven had got out. But Peter didn't want to still be here when those rabbits that'd gone in the top came out the bottom.

Few stragglers emerged, but one was Benjamin Bunny. Weary and confused, he'd been sleeping after sentry duty. Peter blinded his current opponent (as effective as killing them, he'd found, but far easier) then ducked and wove his way through the fighting to reach Benjamin. And his first order to him: to go back into the haven and see if Mopsy was still waiting in that burrow. Without complaint, Benjamin did as he was told, then Peter returned to the fighting.

One-eyed Mark, speaking from experience, had become the number one proponent of Peter's new tactic. A quick swipe across the eyes left an enemy unable to attack (and barely able to defend either). Others followed his example. There was left a stumbling mass of blinded enemies staggering about, flailing their paws and most of the time catching each other by mistake.

But this hadn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the natural borns. The next wave cut ruthlessly through their own wounded to reach the haven's men, and there they adopted the haven's tactics too. Except that with them, after they'd blinded an opponent, they still took the time to kill them as well.

For a time, Tom was fighting back to back with Mark. This proved quite successful, as they took on enemies left and right. Three eyes were better than two, but four would have been even better. However, as they slashed through natural born after natural born, both sides trying to blind the other, Tom got further and further away from Mark. But it was Mark who noticed.

A newly blinded captive bred was squirming and squealing at his foot, and as he stamped down on its neck, Mark looked for his next quarry. What he saw was Tom being surrounded, and still fighting a one-eighty degree battle, ignoring those coming from behind, as if he thought Mark was still there.

"Tom! Behind you!" Mark cried.

But Tom was presently engaged in a tough fight with another captive bred, so Mark took his foot off his newly dead foe and charged toward him. He got caught midway by a couple of enemies, fought one, let Ball'rdo take the other, then carried on toward Tom. Somebody was also coming at him from the other direction. Mark doubled his speed, his lungs burning with effort.

"Tom!" he bellowed as he ran.

But the sound of inflicted death drowned him out. He had no choice. Tom might not notice in time. Mark bounded past. He was faster than Tom's attacker, who was already mid-pounce. Mark collided with him, head first.

The pair of rabbits span in the air, outstretched claws flying, both hissing, a sound unbecoming of bunnies, then hit the ground hard and tumbled down the hill until they both hit a grassy hillock and flew apart again.

Tom defeated his current opponent, and only then noticed. Mark was staggering erect, dazed, about twenty feet down the hill. But the other captive bred was already on his feet. And Mark hadn't noticed. There were allies all around him, but all locked up in their own fights. It was down to Tom.

The whole thing took two leaps. Leap one: from where he was standing, to on top of the captive bred attacking Mark. Leap two: from on top of that dead captive bred's newly broken neck, to where Mark was standing.

"Mark, are you okay?" Tom said.

But he could see he was not. He was wobbly on his feet, and when Tom spoke, Mark looked over the top of Tom's head.

"T-Tom, is that you?" said Mark.

"You can't see me..." Tom hissed.

"I had a bad knock to the head."

"Your good eye's bleeding..."

"I'm just dazed! Help me out of here."

Tom went over and nuzzled his brother's side. Mark flinched.

"It's okay, that's me," Tom said.

"Just nudge me toward the trees," Mark said hoarsely.

"I'll come with you," Tom told him.

"No! You're needed up here..."

So Tom pointed him in the right direction and returned to the fighting. The haven was holding its position, perhaps in some determined last ditch effort to hold onto the remaining two entrances into their little world of the free. Benjamin Bunny had yet to return. Peter was still fighting around the exit, ready to speed his daughter away from the battlefield as soon as she emerged.

Tom threw himself into another battle, this time with a natural born he had no reason to recognise, but was actually called Charles.

The courtier had become Prince Regent Boxer's envoy to Adolf. Of course, the haven knew nothing about this. He fought Tom, gashed open Tom's chest, but then Tom blinded him and he stumbled away.

Tom was going to give chase when suddenly another captive bred charged right past him, knocking him off his feet and winding him. Picking himself up, he saw the jet-black rabbit going for Mark. It was Adolf.

"Mark!" Tom tried to shout, but his belly felt compacted and his ribs were smarting from that nasty wound Charles gave him.

A few seconds later, Peter dispatched another opponent (a small natural born he'd almost felt guilty slaying) and looked up. He saw Tom. He saw Mark. He also saw the lightning-fast black shimmer of Adolf running.

There was nothing he could do.

Mark heard Adolf coming and turned. He lifted his paws and began flailing his legs like the others, trying to give an impression he could still defend himself. Adolf came right in, bit open his neck, and was gone again into the midst of the fighting before Mark even got a single blow in. He crumpled.

Peter and Tom got to him as quickly as they could. With the last of his strength, he'd pulled himself further into the trees. He was lying on his side, breathing fast and bleeding heavily when they reached him.

"Mark, no..." Tom whimpered.

Peter walked around him cautiously. Mark couldn't see they were there, but he seemed to know it was Peter. He let out a loud sigh.

"I don't know what to say," Peter whispered.

"That's okay, Pete," he replied, his voice sluggish. "Neither do I..."

And then he let out one more sigh. He had a funny expression on his face when he died. It's hard to tell when a rabbit is smiling, as Peter well knew, but Mark looked to have been having happy final thoughts. Of his sister, perhaps.

Tom approached the corpse and nuzzled it.

"I'll get him," Tom sniffled. "I'll get him."

Then he looked up at Peter, tears in his eyes.

"There," he said. "I've promised him now..."

Peter nodded, but looked away as he did so.

"Pete! Pete!" cried a voice coming through the trees.

Peter and Tom looked round. It was Benjamin. Peter's heart sank when he saw Benjamin was alone. So where the hell was Mopsy?

"I found her!" he told Peter. "She's safe!"

"Where is she, Benjamin?"

"You've got to come with me, Pete!"

"Go with you? Go where?"

Benjamin glanced at Tom crying, then spotted Mark. "She's down by the road," he said, his voice at a serious pitch Peter had never heard him use before. "She wants to leave, Pete. She wants you to go with her."

"What?" Peter mouthed.

Benjamin repeated himself. As he did so, Peter looked down at Mark again, then out through the trees. The bottom two tunnels had just been broached. The rabbits of Roadkill Turnpike were pouring out of them. The remaining few hundred rabbits from the haven were retreating toward them.

Peter looked back at Benjamin and Tom.

They both nodded.

"Come too," he said quietly.

Benjamin just shook his head.

"And I just made a promise I'm gonna keep," Tom growled.

Peter shook his head. "This... all this..." He trailed off.

"She's just down there," Benjamin said.

Peter looked at them again, just to be sure.

"That way," Benjamin said firmly, pointing a paw.

Peter turned and ran. He heard the noise of the battle for Roadkill Turnpike entering the trees behind him and both Tom and Benjamin launching themselves back into the fighting with gusto. He didn't look back again.

He found Mopsy where Benjamin had said he would, sitting beneath the trees beside the A414. Peter could see the tarmac through the hedgerow. When she heard him coming, Mopsy came running to meet him, crying.

"I would have left!" she cried. "I would have left any time you liked! I would even have left Jack! All you had to do was ask me to!"

Peter shook his head. "It's okay. It's all right."

Then he nuzzled her for a few moments, the sounds of the battle seeming more and more distant by the second. They looked into each other's eyes.

"I'm glad you changed your mind," she whispered.

"Me?" Peter said, frowning but smiling with it.

"Yes, Benjamin told me," she continued.

"Told you what exactly?" Peter asked slowly.

"That you wanted to leave..."

Peter reared back. "Hang on. He said it was your idea."

There followed a moment of mutual realisation.

"I never give him enough credit," Peter said.

Mopsy's face fell. "Papa, what's going to happen if we leave?"

"The same that's going to happen if we stay," Peter told her, adopting that same serious voice Benjamin had used on him. Except, he realised, Benjamin had lifted it from him to begin with. "The haven will fall..."

"Is there... is there no hope?"

Peter sighed. "Not any more. Not since we lost the support of the captive breds. Three hundred of them and we would have won. Hell, even if we only had two hundred of them on our side, we'd still have hope!"

Mopsy looked down sorrowfully, but when she looked up again, instead of looking at Peter, her eyes looked at something behind him.

"Father!" she said nervously, stepping back.

Peter spun, ready to fight whatever was coming. There was indeed another rabbit, another captive bred, but he was sitting out by the road, on the curb. He was a mousy, speckled colour. It took Peter a second to recall.

"Kurt?" Peter said under his breath.

Kurt crept through the bushes sheepishly.

"You!" Mopsy snarled, remembering.

Kurt ducked his large head bashfully.

"What are you doing here?" Peter cried.

Kurt shrugged. "Kinda... had to come."

"Why?" Peter scoffed. "We're losing!"

Kurt looked puzzled, and when he looked past Peter, toward the direction of the sounds of battle, he didn't seem to know what was going on.

"Your friends needed a guide..." he explained.

"Huh? My... what? Which friends?"

Kurt scratched a tick by his ear.

"Umm, all of them, I think..."

NOTES:
The second longest chapter, at just over 4800 words. In tried and tested, George Lucas style, things get to their absolute lowest point immediately before they get better, thereby making the turn for the better actually seem far greater a turn for the books than it might be. Manipulative plotting that's centuries old, but hey, if it ain't broke. I think the seemingly peculiarly placed chapter before this war blew up where I went back to explain what was going on at Peter, Mark and Tom's old warren set this twist up as inevitable. And like Han Solo in the first "Star Wars" movie, Kurt, the rabbit who turned his back on the rebellion, comes good.

The long monologue just before the battle is inspired by those you see in every good old fashioned war movie, most recently "The Lord Of The Rings". However, I tried to slip in a little anti-religious commentary as well. Also with that comment where Adolf realises he's more powerful than Jesus Christ ever was.