Bunnygirls

by Simon Archer

  23

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I pondered as I discussed what Huckleberry and Droopy, the two former keep guards, knew about the Baron, the keep, and the missing bunnies. Hopper was sitting beside me across from them, having finally woken up and dressed without ever knowing that her life was in danger. After learning about the keep’s defenses and the Baron’s known abilities, we were stuck on a clear mix-up with the bunnies. “So, the numbers are exactly what they’re supposed to be, and yet they’re also not? I think I’m missing something, boys. Work with me.”

  “I dunno, boss!” Huckleberry answered. “Our old boss would always be coming over to check on Timberpine, to count the slaves and all. The Baron wants it exact for the bunnies, I suppose, so the boss had us be extra-special extra-careful with them. But when we collected all of them, the boss got angry at us. Something about the keep number and Timberpine number both being wrong or something. We got the big total right, so we thought it didn’t matter, but the Baron wants all of them, so we still got a good beating for it.”

  “That can only mean one of those two groups has an extra, and the other is missing one,” I reasoned. “Could they be talking about Hopper? She ran away fifty years ago, that could be one of the unaccounted ones.”

  “We didn’t start collecting until a half a year ago, boss,” Droopy said. “We’d only been keeping an inventory of the slaves since a few weeks before that.”

  Dammit, none of it made sense. We were missing a bunny, and I didn’t have the slightest idea where she might have been. If she was alive, I had to find her. If she wasn’t, I had to know for sure. But we would have found her either way.

  Unless the Baron was putting on some kind of act, which I couldn’t find a tactical reason for, Timberpine would have been the only one who’d be messing with the counts. But he couldn’t have been trying to get more bunnies if they were all going to the Baron. I would have said that Timberpine was duped, but the incorrect keep number kept throwing me off. Collecting slaves could have interrupted Timberpine trying to steal or swap around with the other lords, so he only got the one girl switched up or something. But how could he have switched it up with the keep? And why? It was far too severe a risk for almost no gain. And why only the one?

  I was still missing something. Maybe if I worked backward from where she could be and found her, I’d find out why he did it later, since that was the more important matter. Where would Timberpine have even put her?

  “Do any of you know of places Timberpine would head off to regularly?” I asked the estate guards around me. “Any places he had you check on to make sure it was secure? Do you guys know about a hidden bunny?”

  “Timberpine would leave to go off someplace on his own, sometimes,” Odie, one of the estate guards, answered. “Told us not to question it, and he’d wheel away by himself.”

  That was especially demeaning for a noble like Timberpine. He was being ridiculously paranoid about keeping her secret from the Baron. Which meant he needed to always have access to this particular bunny. Since Wolves don’t screw or fall in love at all, it could only be for her magic. Was he going to recharge his magic peg legs? Why would he have needed to switch out the bunny for one of his own, then? Was she more powerful? The wizard legs certainly weren’t running out of juice when he was overloading them in our fight. Maybe we hadn’t fought long enough for it to matter. Maybe it was for a skill? Charm-making? Possibly. Wouldn’t that have been convenient? A charm boost was just what we needed to guarantee our victory.

  I shouldn’t have hoped for that. That’d have been too good to be true. But none of that was getting me any closer to finding her, just telling me how much harder it would be to find her where they were putting her away. And with Timberpine gone, it was only a matter of time before the Baron discovered her.

  However, maybe I was thinking about this all wrong. The Baron’s keep was the one with the extra bunny. That would heavily suggest that the missing bunny had to be where the extra keep bunny used to be. So why would the Baron put just one bunny away, and where would she be if Timberpine felt confident he could have just switched her out without him noticing? If he was saving all of the other bunnies for the Blood Moon, he had to be keeping the one for her magic elsewhere. But it was forgettable, so it couldn’t be for charging weapons or something like Timberpine. It couldn’t have been for charm-making, or the different bunny would have been caught almost immediately when they went to get the charms. The magic had to be powering something offhandedly, but they didn’t have electricity, so why would they have needed power? It had to have been a maintenance thing, something always running, like a water heater or…

  A fucking anti-portal-hopping generator! That was it! That was how the Baron kept the portals suppressed! He used a bunny to generate the magical power he’d need.

  I’d have thought something like that would have been inside the keep, but Timberpine wasn’t stupid enough to get so close to the Baron every time he needed a recharge. Even for being unkillable, he’d have exposed his little operation, and he’d never have been able to get to the bunny again. So it had to be outside the keep somewhere. Why not have the generator in the keep?

  Because it needed a special place to set it up or it was way too big to fit inside. Either one of those would have been easier to find than one bunny girl. We had to find a way to save her if she was in danger. Disrupting the generator would have let us make portals again, and that’d have been the greatest military asset we could’ve hoped for.

  None of that mattered, though. Saving the girls in the keep wasn’t an immediate danger. They wouldn’t have been in danger until the Blood Moon. The girl, though, was in an unknown danger, and we were going to save all of them.

  “What big ass buildings or structures are around here, boys?” I asked all of the nearby Wolves. “The bigger and stranger, the better. Any place you could hide a generator that covers a hundred miles of land.”

  “Generator?” Odie asked. “Is that like the thing the Regent’s supposed to have?”

  “Yeah, that’s the landlord, right?” Snoopy, another estate guard, piped up. “The noble lord of all the land, like a Double-Baron for all the barons?”

  “Yeah, that guy!” Odie replied. “And he’s got one of those generator things covering most of the land with something or other. Timberpine was talking about it to himself in his office one day, saying how the Baron was getting his own, and he didn’t know why. Then he just got grumbly, and I didn’t hear much else.”

  “One generator for the whole country?” I asked them. Damn, that thing had to be crammed with bunnies. Or maybe it just had the one, but she was just absolutely loaded with magic. She definitely needed saving at some point, especially before the Blood Moon. No way would they leave a bunny like that to waste until the next Blood Moon. But if that bunny covered the whole country, why would the Baron have used his own?

  That was a problem for another day, the next one after we killed the Baron.

  “Boys. Focus. Places for generators. What do you have for me?”

  “There’s a big mound a few miles to the west, boss,” Snoopy answered. “It’s usually got Wolves just standing around it in a circle.”

  “That sounds like an underground generator to me!” I stood up. “Let’s go sabotage it! I’ll take a few Wolves and Hopper with me.”

  Maybe we could have split the Baron’s focus if we’re lucky. Any of them coming for me wouldn’t have been coming for the mansion if they decide to attack. To the surrounding Wolves and bunnies already busy making the preparations for a battle, I made my announcement for war.

  “All barricade and siege prep need to be on double-time,” I declared. “Every Wolf to their posts and set up a perimeter. Every window gets boarded and blocked, every musket preloaded with a fast reload setup. Those of you not making those preparations need to get the extra supplies organized and mobile for taking over to the keep. Any unable to help or otherwise occupied with critical work needs
to be moved to the master bedroom immediately. We don’t know when the Baron will realize his spies aren’t coming back, so he could bring his forces at any minute. We can’t be caught off guard.”

  Like busy bees, my words sprung them all into zooming speeds, supplies and ammo shuffling about with Rabbit feet. I made my own preparations, finding all the ammunition I would need and taking as many of my boys as I thought I needed. I grabbed Balto by the shoulder.

  “When danger comes, you’re in charge of the Wolves,” I told him. “Keep everyone safe and make sure everyone comes out of this alive. Survival over victory.”

  “Oh, uh, me?” Balto hesitated. “Are you sure? I was just working for the other guys--”

  “And now you work for me.” I corrected him. “You’re committed, and you were able to stay hidden from Timberpine for as long as you did. That takes brains. I trust you to handle this for me. Keep to your oath. We’ll be back soon.”

  Time to kick some ass. Although getting past the city guards at the front gate may have proven to be a challenge. If they were told to keep us inside the city to be watched by the Baron or the Captain of the Guard, then we might have needed to finagle our escape with some drastic measures.

  24

  “Oh my goodness, that’s me!” Tinker interrupted the story back in the present with the realization. “You guys were coming to save me! I’m the bunny in the generator!”

  “Hey, don’t spoil it!” I jokingly chastised her. “I was going to make the reveal dramatic, maybe give some red herrings to maybe another bunny or something. Then it was going to be like ‘Hey, it was Tinker all along!’ And you’d be all like ‘Wow! I can’t believe it! What a crazy and unexpected twist!’”

  “I don’t mean to question you, sir,” Tinker raised an eyebrow. “But who would I be spoiling it for? Hopper was there in most of the story, and it’s obvious I’m the only bunny you could be referring to.”

  “That’s a fair point, my lord,” Hopper agreed. “She’s the listener for your story. If she’s already guessed it, who else needs it hidden?”

  “Well…” I paused for a moment. There was a feeling of cosmic pressure, as if I was coming close to a great truth about the nature of my existence. But then it was gone. “I don’t know. I just feel like now there’s not a whole lot of punch to the ending. We already know that we got you out.”

  “I still don’t know how!” Tinker shouted, pulling herself off the ground as she grabbed my arm in an acrobatic feat I couldn’t quite figure out. “There are so many guards! And you still had to get out of the city. How d'you deal with all of them?”

  “With style, young Tinker,” I told her. “The city guards were especially tricky. But, with just a pinch of cunning wit, a dash of tactical brilliance, a teaspoon of expert espionage, and a hint of shadowy stealth, all mixed together with some fantastic execution, we found a way.”

  Do you know what doesn’t take wit, brilliance, espionage, stealth, or execution? Passing by city guards that were already too terrified of you to try anything.

  Hopper’s ‘secret wind’ along with my victory over Timberpine made me a freakish monster to them. Apparently, a Rabbit with the ability to slam people into walls and topple unkillable pillars of the community is an ‘unnatural evil,’ as one of them put it. Hey, whatever gets me through as quickly as possible. Even if they did have orders to keep us caged in here, one look with my ‘unnaturally evil’ eye, and they were putty.

  Plus, the spies in the guard working for Timberpine before now worked for me. Very helpful boys. Fido and Spot, your service would be rewarded when I took the Barony, plus, then I could officially give you your names in front of others.

  It was also far too easy. They thought they could plan the assault for when I was gone, maybe send some Wolves out to kill my boys and me out by the generator, too. As long as my people kept their wits about them, they could have dealt with anything the city guard could have thrown at them. I, myself, needed to act as if an attack on both of us was imminent and plan out my movements accordingly.

  Fully kitted out, me now wearing some chainmail Bugs pointed me to along with the rest of my paraphernalia and Hopper sporting some tailored leather under a flannel, we went west. Moving through the countryside, past my ranch-spas, the mound with the generator was only a few miles out, just as Snoopy said, like a pimple on the cheek of the dead forest, still shaved to stumps like the rest of it. At the very top, a steel pipe crowned it like a little capper on top.

  I took Snoopy along with Balto, Old Yeller, Foxhound, Toby, Scooby, Lassie, Poodle, and Shepard with Hopper and me as the assault team. With the estate’s supplies, I had half of them with hammers and the other half with spears, while they each had a musket if needed. A mile out, the group of us huddled down by some stumps more than a hundred yards out from the mound and hunkered down for a bit while I took out the rifle to scope out the area.

  About ten guards outside total, all standing in equal spacing around the mound. No easily spotted leaders among them for a quick fight, but that’s why I brought the Wolves along. However, it was strange seeing their blue uniforms and stained leathers. Blue was supposed to be a noble color. Were all of these guards nobles, too? The Baron was just showing off his power by posting all of them here.

  Unless the Baron was absentmindedly replacing elite Wolves all of the time when Timberpine killed them, I was sure he had a sneakier way into the place. Maybe he had some sort of pathway inside tucked away somewhere else, but we’d have been searching for that for miles before we found anything, and we were on a timer. So we had to go through these guys.

  “This might be a tougher fight than we thought, boys,” I whispered over to the group. “Looks like we’ve only got nobility protecting the place. I don’t know how the Baron managed to get ten prideful sons of bitches to do grunt work, but there they are. Each one of them’s gonna know how to kill another Wolf, so do not take them lightly.”

  “They must be elites, boss,” Balto whispered back to me. “It’s sort of the middle ground between the grunts and the nobles. Sometimes a powerful noble promotes a grunt to get their own pack and eat some of the noble’s bunnies while still doing grunt work for their boss. Most of them are just in it for the bunnies.”

  “Now you tell me,” I said, lining up my shots. “Do these guys have packs, then?”

  “Probably not, if they’re not here helping.”

  “They’re stronger than others we’ve fought, most likely work directly for the Baron, eat bunnies regularly, and have more inside,” I summarized the situation. “We’ll have to play it smart, like always. Hopper, you and the boys go ahead quiet. Space yourselves, pick a different target each, and get to the edge of the forest. Wait for me to take the first shot, then shoot and charge.”

  Fast as they were silent, they shuffled off like ninjas to their positions. I had their muskets loaded with twice as much powder for one shot since I needed kill shots with such a lousy reload time. I thought I was overly cautious with that, but now it seemed like I didn’t put enough in them. When I saw that they were ready, I picked off the first one with a bang that shook the air. As soon as my shot went off, the rest of my crew’s muskets went off, too, leaving only four enemy wolves standing with grievous wounds while the others fell dead. Before they could see what was happening, my boys were on them like racing hounds, each doubling up on leftover elites as they fell victim to our trap.

  Surprisingly, two of the elites did fairly well on their own, taking on both attackers with very little trouble. The other two, one hounded by three attackers and the other assaulted by Hopper, didn’t stand much of a chance. Hopper’s foe fell quickly after she joined the battle. With a few swift kicks that knocked the beast out faster than I could line up a shot to nick it. By the time I went to help out the first two groups, it was already too late for me to fire. I couldn’t get a clear view with all of the bodies now spreading to help the other groups, which fell one by one until there were only my boys and Hopper
standing. I rubbed my ears. Even with hearing protection, this rifle was a loud one. Getting up, I jogged over to the mound to meet my people.

  “You see anything resembling an entrance?” I asked Hopper.

  She pointed to the top of the mound which had a metal tube coming up with a hatch on it. Couldn’t have told you how I missed that connection.

  “Oh, right, that’d do it.” I walked up to the pipe with the hatch, the group following close behind. “Six of you will hang back and watch for anybody who heard the noise. You run into problems, howl, and I’ll send the other three back to help you out.”

  After they acknowledged my command, I snagged a key off of one of the dead elites. I unlocked the hatch with my pistol pointed down the tube, ready for guards on the inside to pop up. Seeing no one with harmful intent, I put my feet to the ladder and made my way in with Hopper, Snoopy, Toby, and Scooby.

  At the bottom of the ladder, we came across a set of catacombs, with chambers about thirty feet wide and almost twice as tall, connected in a chain curving by openings that gave a feel of invisible walls between them. The cave-like walls echoed every sound, including the quiet thumps and taps of fingers and feet against the metal ladder. I made sure to take quiet steps with my bulky boots to give us a better sense of stealth. Hopper was light as a feather, and her steps couldn’t have woken an alarm clock. My boys, on the other hand, did not possess the grace or tact for a subtle entrance. With three booming stomps as they decided to jump down from halfway up the ladder, the sounds alarmed through the catacombs, bouncing back and forth between us and whoever else was here. I got the pistol ready as I gave them a quiet glare before looking out through the curving tunnel.

  As if it was species specific, a discord of paws smacking the cavern floor through the chambers warned us of the imminent number of Wolves we were going to face. I guess this was what happened when you brought brutes on a stealth mission. Machete in one hand and shotgun in the other, I waited for the assailants to make their grand entrance.