Grumble and Gasp: Of Rabbits and Regicide - Chapter 4, Part 2

Of Rabbits and Regicide – Chapter Four: March Madness

by Brude Bowyer

King Thaddeus unsheathed his sword in one fluid motion. Despite years of peacetime rule, his muscles remembered old battles, fingers finding familiar purchase on the leather of the pommel. The king’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the chaos erupting around his family, jaw set with regal determination beneath his meticulously groomed beard.

“Form ranks!” Thaddeus commanded, voice cutting through the screams with royal authority. His free hand gestured sharply, directing the remaining guards into defensive positions. “Lillith, Lucien, to me!”

He pivoted smoothly, sword sweeping in a scything arc that separated a leaping rabbit’s head from its shoulders. Blood sprayed in a crimson fan across the trampled grass as the creature’s body tumbled lifelessly to earth. The king allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction before turning to coordinate with his wife.

The sight that greeted him stopped his breath like a fist to the sternum.

Lillith had already gathered Prince Lucien and Elara close. But instead of seeking her husband’s protection, she had instinctively moved to position herself back-to-back with Grumle. Her skirts were gathered in one fist, a jeweled dagger gleaming in her other hand. The queen’s posture mirrored Grumle’s precisely. They moved in perfect synchronization, rotating slightly to cover all approaches, needing no words to coordinate their defense.

It was the dance of partners who had trained together, fought together, trusted each other over the years with their very lives.

A rabbit burst from the ground at Grumle’s flank. Without hesitation, Lillith’s arm snapped outward, her dagger finding the creature’s eye.

“Three more, east,” Grumle grunted, his voice low and intimate.

“See them,” Lillith replied, their communication efficient battlefield shorthand.

Thaddeus felt something cold growing in his stomach, something that had nothing to do with the massacre unfolding around them. He watched as his wife shifted her weight, compensating for Grumle’s movement before the sergeant had even completed it. They breathed in unison, exhaled in unison, their bodies oriented to each other like constellations in the night sky.

“My king!” Orrin’s booming voice carried as he stepped in front of Thaddeus, blocking his view of his wife. “Let them taste Prydeni steel!”

Where Grumle fought with quiet competence, Orrin was all flamboyant strength and battle-joy. His massive sword carved glittering arcs through the air, each swing accompanied by a bellowed challenge or grim jest. He waded into a cluster of rabbits that had cornered a handful of servants, his blade cleaving through multiple targets with each devastating stroke.

“Is this the best you bunnies can muster?” Orrin roared, bisecting an opponent from ears to haunches. “Or do you prefer to be called rabbits? Maybe I’m just splitting hares here.” He laughed at his own pun, a sound of genuine pleasure as he stomped a paw reaching for his ankle.

Blood slicked his armor, none of it his own. His eyes gleamed with the wild light of battle-fervor, a man doing exactly what he’d been born to do. He caught a rabbit in mid-leap, impaling it on his sword before flinging the corpse back toward its companions. “Come then! Come test yourselves against Orrin Blackwood!”

Four rabbits accepted his challenge, converging on him from different angles. Orrin’s sword swept in a horizontal slash that caught the first, transforming it into a spray of fur and viscera. The second rabbit latched onto his leg, teeth seeking the gap in his armor. Orrin’s gauntleted fist hammered down once, twice, reducing the creature’s skull to crimson ruin against his greave.

The third rabbit landed on his shoulder, blade aimed for his exposed neck. Orrin’s hand shot up, catching the creature by its throat. “Clever girl,” he acknowledged, before crushing its windpipe with a single squeeze and tossing the body aside. “But not clever enough!” The fourth surveyed the carnage the big man had wrought and wisely jumped back into its hole.

Thaddeus and Orrin fought their way toward the royal carriage, where Grumle and two other guards now maintained a tenuous defense. The king’s sword moved with the residual skill of a man who had once been renowned for his blade work. A rabbit leapt for his face; he gutted it midair, barely breaking stride. Another emerged beneath his feet; he sidestepped and brought his heel down on its spine with a crack that punctuated the creature’s squeal.

But his eyes kept returning to Lillith and Grumle.

The queen rotated smoothly as a rabbit tried to flank their position, Grumle’s spear flashing out over her shoulder to catch it across the throat. Blood sprayed across her ermine cloak, the crimson startling against white fur. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other, but somehow Lillith had known when to step and where to go. Thaddeus had heard the stories of Lillith fighting alongside her guardian during the Dire-Snail invasion, the once fanciful tales now confirmed before his own eyes. The duo maintained their defensive formation around Lucien and Elara, a living fortress of coordination and steel.

Elara stayed close to the prince, one arm around his shoulders. Her other hand clutched a long hairpin, a gift from the queen, Thaddeus recalled, its tip already darkened with rabbit blood. Her body angled to provide additional protection for Lucien. The prince himself stood remarkably still, watching everything with the intense focus of a child determined to learn.

The sound of Orrin’s laughter carried over the din as he cleaved yet another rabbit in two. “They’ve no stomach for a proper fight!” he called to anyone who would listen. “Stand your ground and they falter!”

Thaddeus ignored the exuberant warrior, continuing to watch the heroic Avenhart family defending themselves from all attackers. Only it was not he standing at the head of his family. Coldness bloomed in his chest, even as he dispatched another rabbit with mechanical reflex. The creature’s blood splashed hot across his boots, but he barely noticed, his attention fixed on the tableau before him: his wife and her bodyguard, his son watching them both with admiration.

Before he could wade through the battlefield to his family, the rabbits retreated just as suddenly as they had appeared, responding to some unknown signal. One moment they were everywhere, cottontails and blood-slick blades; the next, they disappeared into their tunnels, leaving behind nothing but their dead and the carnage they’d wrought. The final rabbit, Thumper himself, paused at his tunnel entrance. The rabbit’s nose twitched as if memorizing the scent of victory, before slipping silently back into the embrace of the earth.

Silence descended on the destruction of the camp, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the soft, terrified weeping of survivors. The pastoral setting that had welcomed their convoy hours earlier now resembled a nightmarish painting. Wagons overturned with splintered wheels pointing skyward like broken limbs; pavilions collapsed into blood-soaked heaps of once-fine fabric; bodies scattered in grotesque positions that defied the morning’s promise of safety.

Orrin was the first to break the stillness, his booming voice carrying across the devastation. “Check for survivors! Wounded to the central pavilion!” His massive frame moved through the wreckage lifting debris to free those trapped beneath, all battle-joy quickly set aside for an officer’s resolve.

Survivors emerged cautiously from beneath carriages, from behind overturned supply carts, from within the folds of collapsed tents. Their faces bore the uniform mask of shock. Servants who had hidden successfully now knelt beside those who hadn’t, pressing makeshift bandages against wounds that pulsed with fading life. Guards who had managed to stay standing helped gather the fallen, their faces grim as they separated those who might yet be saved from those beyond mortal aid.

King Thaddeus stood amidst the chaos, sword still in hand, silently watching the aftermath unfold. His breathing slowed gradually as his heart settled from its battle rhythm. With almost ceremonial movements, he wiped his blade clean on a section of unmarred grass before sliding it back into its ornate scabbard. The soft click of steel finding home punctuated the moment, drawing a line between violence and its aftermath.

He did not immediately move to help the injured or comfort the frightened. Instead, his eyes sought out and met the Queen’s, his gaze darkening at the calm he found there.

Grumle’s spear stood planted in the earth beside her, its shaft dark with drying blood. His hands, those large, scarred, commoner’s hands, moved with surprising gentleness as they hovered near but didn’t quite touch the Queen’s shoulders, her arms, checking for injuries his eyes might have missed in the chaos.

“Your Majesty,” Grumle’s voice carried just far enough for Thaddeus to catch the words, “are you certain you weren’t struck? The second wave came from behind.”

Lillith shook her head, her usual regal composure reasserting itself as she looked to her approaching husband. “I’m unharmed. Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Your reflexes haven’t dulled,” Grumle said, his voice pitched low enough that Thaddeus had to strain to hear it. The words carried the weight of shared history, of battles fought side by side.

Lillith’s answering smile was small but genuine. The kind of smile, Thaddeus realized, she had never directed at him. “Neither have yours, Grumble.”

That nickname. That cursed, intimate nickname she’d never bothered to explain. Thaddeus felt something shift inside him, a tectonic movement of emotion that altered his internal landscape permanently. The jealousy he had nursed as a private wound, manageable, containable, suddenly calcified into something darker and more dangerous. His jaw clenched tight enough that he heard a faint crack from his back teeth.

Elara appeared at the Queen’s side with a damp cloth, and the spell between Lillith and her protector broke. Grumle stepped back, resuming his proper distance, once again the professional guardian. But Thaddeus had seen enough. He had seen everything.

“Father?” Prince Lucien’s voice came from somewhere near his elbow. “Father, are you hurt? Your hand is bleeding.”

Thaddeus looked down to find his son staring up at him with those perceptive blue eyes that missed nothing. He followed the boy’s gaze to his own hand, where his nails had dug crescents into his palm deep enough to draw blood. He hadn’t even felt it.

“It’s nothing,” he said, forcing his fingers to uncurl. “A scratch from the battle.”

Lucien’s gaze drifted from his father’s face to where Grumle now stood at attention beside the Queen, all trace of familiarity vanished.

The boy’s attention returned to his father’s face, studying the tightness around Thaddeus’s mouth, the narrowed eyes, the rigid set of his shoulders. Lucien was only eight, but in that moment, he looked older.

“Are we going back to the castle now?” Lucien asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“Yes,” Thaddeus replied, finally tearing his gaze from his wife and her bodyguard. “Our summer plans will have to wait. This...” he gestured at the devastation around them, “...requires immediate response.”

Lucien nodded solemnly, but his eyes darted once more between his father and the object of his father’s attention. The boy’s expression was unreadable, but Thaddeus could almost see the machinery of thought working behind those eyes, filing away observations, connecting patterns that children shouldn’t need to recognize.

“Sergeant Grumle saved Mother and me,” Lucien said, the statement neither question nor accusation, merely fact.

“That is his duty,” Thaddeus replied, unable to keep the edge from his voice. “Nothing more.”

“But you saved everyone else,” Lucien added, a child’s attempt at consolation that somehow cut deeper than any criticism.

Thaddeus placed a hand on his son’s shoulder, feeling the bird-fragile bones beneath his palm. “Kings have different duties than bodyguards,” he said, the words tasting like ash. “Remember that, Lucien. A king must see the whole battlefield, not just one person on it.”

Lucien’s gaze dropped to where his father’s fingers pressed tightly into his shoulder, then lifted again to study Thaddeus’s face. “Yes, Father,” he said.

Thaddeus watched his son’s eyes slide once more to Grumle’s hand, which had returned briefly to Lillith’s elbow as he helped her over a fallen tent pole. The boy’s expression shifted subtly, a sudden hardness in the set of his mouth, a cold gleam in his eye. He had taught his son an unintended lesson.

“Come,” Thaddeus said abruptly, steering his son toward the relative safety of the remaining guards. “We must organize our return. A king cannot appear weak after an attack.”

But inside, something had cracked beyond repair. As he issued commands for the convoy’s reorganization, his mind was already turning toward solutions, permanent ones, for the problem personified by the sergeant who still stood too close to his queen.

Behind him, Prince Lucien watched, and learned.

Thanks for reading. The story is a work in progress, and I welcome all comments and constructive criticism. This is book 0 in the Grumble and Gasp series. If you find yourself liking the story and wanting more, the full first novel is available on Kindle and Amazon.

Book 1 Available Here!

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