by Simon Archer
“My lord, I have him!” Hopper shouted over to me. I saw that she had him stuck between the ground and two portals, pressing him against his own bouncing armor forcefield on two sides as each touched each other through the angled doors. Clever. I hadn’t thought of that. A sizeable crowd of Wolves, both my boys and keep guards, gathered around the body to witness the death they had never believed possible.
“Great job, Hopper.” I walked over to the fat noble to see the situation. Those holes in him were as nasty as they were thorough. I looked down at the Baron’s head, very slowly removing the helmet to keep the forcefield down. When I took it off, I could see the grey skin of a hairless Wolf beneath it, wrinkled and lumpy like unmentionable places on an old man. His eyes were open, his tongue hung out of his mouth, and blood had stained his canine teeth. He was very dead.
“The Baron’s dead!” one of the keep guards shouted. “What a day. You know, I was just thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if someone actually could kill the Baron?’ And now someone did.’”
“He was so fat,” a second guard spoke beside him. “Truly an inspiration to all Wolves who want to eat lots of rancid meat. I thought he’d be fat forever. Who killed him?”
“Baron Dragonoak has slain the former Baron!” Hopper shouted as a proclamation. “Using all of the tools at his disposal, including his pack members and servants, he outsmarted and outmaneuvered him on all fronts, even with the Baron’s superior numbers and physical might. Truly, he is mightier than any in Thumperton Port. Long may he reign undefeated!” I mean, if they bought that, I was more than happy to skip whooping a hundred asses in a night to reestablish my authority.
“Does that count?” A third guard shouted from the crowd. “Can you use someone else and still claim the win?”
“Well, I mean, they’re still his stuff, so he’s still the one doing things with his stuff, technically,” another guard replied with a shrug.
“Technically counts!” Tinker threw her hands up in the air in victory. The keep guards’ collective gaze burned away Tinker’s confidence in her answer. “Right?”
The pause hung in the air like a dead fish, reeking through the whole courtyard.
“Yeah, alright.” A keep guard from the back of the crowd spoke up. All the keep guards cheered, with my boys joining in, making a thunderous crowd that I couldn’t deny was all under my protection anymore.
“One of the keep guards, go free the bunnies!” My voice cut through the crowd to give my first official order as Baron. “They’ve waited long enough.”
“Right away, Baron Dragonoak.” A keep guard answered, bringing another with him as they went into the side of the keep walls to find the girls in the prison cells.
“I’ve got more flannel shirts to make!” Hopper said, portal hopping away out the gate and to the manor before I could say a word to her. “I’ll have to use silk to fill out all you’ll need!” With her speed and the portals, she was gone. And I really was gonna have a long night, after all.
There was a lot more to do, even immediately, with Wolves and bunnies to name, nobles to sort through, assets to reassign, packs to reorganize, city planning to restructure, and a war to plan. That was going to be a lot of work. Necessary work, and we’d have made it happen. With all the power I had to use, now, I could start getting some real momentum.
30
Regent Silverfang
“Sire! Sire!” My herald drilled his shrill voice into my ear as I tried to return to my council chamber. It was a high, whistling sound, coming from a fairly small Wolf. He’d have been no more than a grunt if it were power I needed from him. With black fur and white stripes down his back, he reminded me of a skunk. And his news never smelled good.
“Does it pertain to the Blood Moon, herald?” I adjusted the cuffs of my red and purple double-breasted jacket, keeping the cufflinks shiny and facing outward as they should while I combed my hair back. I was so glad that I was more majestic than other nobles, who only wore blue upon them when red and purple were far more rare and majestic, and gold was absolutely necessary to show others how majestic you were. My hair slicked back into a majestic wolf’s tail tied at the back of my head, which I checked to make sure it was still just as bushy and majestic as my tail. With my height being so majestic already, I was sure to show the councilmen who was important and who was majestic.
“Well, that’s hard to say, sire.” The herald answered a half answer. “There are elements of it that have an effect--”
“If it’s anything less than a herd of bunnies missing, a slave revolt in our citadel, or a storm that would wipe out the continent, I don’t want to hear it!” I grabbed the herald by the neck of his petticoat, lifting him into the air. “We don’t have long before it comes upon us, and we’ve yet to solve the increasingly vapid yields of bunny magic on reversing the Forgetting. I don’t have time to play around with your idle gossip or trivialities! Out with it already.”
“Sire, it’s about Thumperton Port, sire.” The herald got out with it. I threw him to the ground in my contempt.
“That’s already being taken care of!” I said, continuing on to the council chambers as I was before.
“Sire, you don’t understand!” The herald skidded his feet back up to follow closely behind me. “There’s a situation developing--”
“And it’s being handled, herald!” I shouted back to him. “I’ve already sent a champion challenger to reorganize and restore order. To be perfectly frank, I’m glad to have the excuse. That baron made an attempt to smuggle a replacement battery with the same energy signature as ours. Turns out, he had sent a hare with a charm to falsify it. Can you believe the fool he tried to make of me? He’s been a thorn in my side for quite some time now, and this is the perfect chance to have him slain for his treason.”
“That’s just it, sire!” The herald slid across the marble floor of the citadel hall to get in front of me. “A message from the scryer says that something’s happened to their baron.”
“Oh, bite my tail.” I slowed down my pace. “Please tell me he’s still alive.”
“It seems not, sire.”
“Well, that’s the champion challenger’s problem.” I returned to my speed walk to get to the meeting I was already late for. “He’ll just have to subjugate his underlings himself. Inform him of this development. Though I doubt it’ll bother him. I’ve sent one of my personal best to the place. If he was a match for the old baron, he’ll recollect his underlings in no time at all. And tell him to prioritize redistributing all of their bunnies over to the citadel immediately first, regardless of the chaos. We need every last one.”
“That’s not the problem, sire.” The herald clarified. “The baron was slain in a challenge.”
“What?” I stopped myself, shaking off the unmajestic audacity of my lackey. “I will have your arms broken, herald, do not play your games with me.”
“I play no games!” He pleaded with me. “What I say to you is what the scryer has reported. They have seen it!”
“Of all the times for Timberpine to make his move, of course, he would have picked now.” I fussed to myself… majestically, of course. “He’s been building up his power underneath the Baron all of this time, and it’s obvious that he’s become more powerful than the Baron himself. With the Blood Moon practically at our doorstep, we have no resources to spare to deal with him ourselves. But, if my suspicions of his supposed ‘invulnerability’ are true, the champion will deal with that cripple just as easily as he would have the Baron. We can only hope that Timberpine doesn’t know of the champion ahead of time. The Baron would have been stupid enough to face him head-on, but Timberpine won’t be so hasty. He’s so famously cool-headed and tactical, so never prone to fits of blind rage and brash decision-making, he’d have the champion assassinated before he stepped into the city. But my champion should be strong enough to handle even that.”
“Sire, it wasn’t Timberpine!” The herald insisted on a ridiculous theory.
“Now, you jest w
ith me!” I laughed, pushing the herald over, majestically on my end and clumsily on his. “Timberpine is the only noble with the power to face the Baron in the area, both in magical might and in political power. If it wasn’t him, it might as well have been the Hunter himself come back!”
“What are you doing, sire!” My herald whispered, continuing his audacity, but to a far less humorous effect. “You cannot speak that title here. You will be stripped of your rank as well as your skin!”
“Please, he can’t hear me,” I assured him. “His predatory powers are not nearly at their peak as they may have once been. He grows weak. If he is so scared of a fairytale, then he can die with it.”
“But the legend isn’t dead, sire!” My herald grabbed at my majestic jacket, looking at me with dreadful eyes that did not make me feel majestic at all, even with all of his superstitious nonsense. “The legend is real!”
“Get off me, you vermin-bather!” I ripped his unmajestic hands off of my coat, throwing him off to the side. “The Hunter is a Rabbit myth made to inspire the Rabbits into revolting against us. It was a failed experiment since they’ve never even tried once to do so. They are weak and frail to their core, and their Hunter is just as pathetic.”
“He killed the Baron!” The herald stood back up. “Lord Regent Silverfang, I jest not, I am of right mind and sober diet. I tell you only the truth that the scryer has revealed to me. It was him!”
“You saw it wrong, herald.” I turned to refute any more of his inanity. “The Hunter is as real as the shadows of a unicorn. No substance, no history, only vague stories too old for even us to remember in our prime regression of the Forgetting.”
“Then how do you explain a Rabbit heading the Barony of Thumperton Port!” The herald shouted. “My eyes have seen a hare built like a mountain commanding the guards of the keep through the scryer’s vision. They obey him as if he were a pack master. Who else could he be but the Rabbit legend? Who else could he be but some sort of next incarnation of its evil?”
“You know as well as I that the visions of the scryer can be vague and misleading.” I tried to return him to sense. “Just because you’ve seen something in the vision means next to nothing without any proper context.”
“He wears Timberpine’s coat!” The herald became hysterical. “He stands and acts as pack leader to Timberpine’s guards, as well as the city’s and keep’s guards together. And he has Rabbits, hares and bunnies alike, walking and talking beside the Wolves. He has them working together, the bunnies out of cages and free to frolic, and the hares giving commands to Wolves! It’s a dark blasphemy, one only brought down by the unholiest of figures. It could only be the black magic of one so malicious.”
“You will speak of none of this to anyone!” I put my snout right up to one of his eyes. “If your lies and hysteria reached the greater public, the Rabbits might find their reason to rise up against us, and the Wolves might resist their work in keeping the Rabbits where they belong. And by no means are you to let him know about this. You are merely to tell the champion challenger to expect a new Baron and not to fall for any tricks they might pull. When he finds the real Baron, he’ll take his head, just as planned. No more of this heresy!”
“He will not be happy when he finds out, sire.”
“That’s why he’ll never find out!” I smacked him upside his snout, knocking him back as I readjusted the cuff of my jacket. “Go. And be silent about your wild fables!” The herald clawed the ground as he shuffled off to follow my orders.
Infuriating. Now it had his unmajestic blood on it, just to add insult to injury on this day. It didn’t help that I was already late to the council meeting and further delayed by this interruption. I’d have to whip my cleaning slave twice as hard to get these stains out. Not to mention the distraction of my herald’s story rattling in my brain now. And just before I was to meet up with the council members. And him.
For all of his declining prowess, he could still always tell when I was hiding something from him.
A Note from the Author
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