Of Mice And Chicks

"Oh. That." Lani had unrabbited him. She'd bent over and plucked the lance out of his hand and broken it across her knee. And then she'd leaned down in the saddle and given him a big kiss. There he was, standing with a bunch of other captives and looking as if he wished she'd only killed him. How was he supposed to live this down? Who'd hire him now? What would people call him? The Cute Mercenary? He'd have to go to night school and study accounting or something.

"Be damned if I don't think Baron Howard'll pay her a bonus for what she done," the sergeant said.

"Yeah?" That made Georgia perk up.

Slim Jim looked as if he was afraid he'd said too much. Quickly, he added, "I can't promise, mind you. It's up to the baron. But if it was up to me, I sure would."

Georgia knew what that meant. It had almost as much tease in it as Curls' wife. "Well, we'll find out," she said, which was a lot politer than hauling off and kicking something—preferably Slim Jim.

Curls had the brains to post scouts to make sure Baron Ritz's men didn't regather and counterattack during his march back to his own lands. That surprised Georgia, who wouldn't have bet he could add eleven and ten without dropping his pants. But Ritz and the crackers had truly crumbled. They stayed away. Georgia was willing to bet it would be a long, long time before the beaten baron's bunnies bounded over the barrier between the baronies.

When they got back to Castle Howard, sentries on the wall shouted questions, asking how the fight had gone. "We made stooges of 'em," Curls shouted, and they burst into cheers.

Up rumbled the portcullis. Down creaked the drawbridge. In bounded the rabbit riders. In plodded the prisoners. Out rolled the beer barrels. Backwards ran the sentences.

The sun set. A wizard set a small fireball floating above the courtyard, just to work a little bit of magic into the story. Georgia took care of Clumper while Lani saw to Thumper. Lani might mangle mere men, but she was always kind to bunnies. Once every whisker had been washed and Thumper's cottontail curried, Lani said, "See how they're all happy out there, Georgia?"

"Yeah, I see." Georgia longed for a mug or three of beer herself. Sometimes keeping an eye on Lani was singularly unrewarding. Other times, by contrast, it was plurally unrewarding.

"I won't do nothin' bad, Georgia," Lani said. "Honest I won't."

She always said that. She always meant it, too. Except on the battlefield, she didn't have a mean bone in her body. Even then, she just smashed people. She didn't dislike them—not that the difference did them any good. Off the battlefield . . . Off the battlefield, things had a way of going wrong. "Remember what happened in Crabgrass?" Georgia asked.

A few days earlier, Lani had. Georgia could tell she didn't now. She wondered why she'd bothered to ask. Lani wouldn't have remembered her head for long if it wasn't stapled on. Georgia muttered a curse. The only way she could have kept Lani out of the celebration was by sitting on that empty head. Georgia was damned if she would. She'd earned some celebrating of her own.

"Just keep your hands to yourself," she said. "You got that?"

"Sure thing, Georgia." Lani was obliging. She was always obliging. That was part of the problem.

People cheered when the two of them came out into the courtyard. Hard-bitten, beer-swilling mercenaries shouted out Lani's name. Some of them shouted Georgia's name, too, but Lani was the one who'd made sure the cracker captain could never admit his real name in a hiring hall again. The cheers and the shouts made her blossom like a sunflower.

"They like me. They really like me!" she said.

"Yeah." Georgia eyed the soldiers. Some of them—quite a few of them—were liable to like Lani altogether too well. What had happened in Crabgrass hadn't been unfriendly. Oh, no. A lot of other things, sure, but not unfriendly. That was Georgia's last thought before somebody thrust a foaming mug into her right hand and somebody else thrust another one into her left. She had to get rid of them—she had a reputation of her own to uphold, after all. But by the time she came up for air, she didn't see Lani any more. Then a different somebody else gave her some more beer. Once she'd downed that, her own head started to swim.

Curls' wife whirled through the crowd in a dress that couldn't have been any tighter if it were painted on. By the way the mercenaries, male and female, rubbed up against her, they wanted to find out if it was painted on. By the way she giggled and swayed, she didn't mind in the least.

Curls whirled through the crowd, too, but somehow never in the same part of it as his wife. The happier she looked, the more sour he got. Georgia had noticed she was drinking hard. If anything, Curls was drinking harder. That might turn out to be . . . interesting.