Brockhall was the ancestral home of the Brock family. It was entirely underground, with a secret entrance hidden in an oak tree. Right now it was crammed with woodland creatures, the largest of whom was a badger, Bella. She was the last member of the Brock family left in Mossflower. Skipper, an otter chieftain, was there, and so was Lady Amber, the queen of the squirrels. There was also a rooster named Foghorn Leghorn and a skunk called Pepe le Pew.

Seated by the fire, Gonff the Mousethief answered the council's questions.

"Where did you see Bugs captured?" Bella asked.

"Westerly, over near the fringe by Kotir. He got caught by Tsarmina and her soldiers when he came out of his hole."

"Sacre bleu!" exclaimed Pepe le Pew. "I knew zat would 'appen one day."

"I was sittin' further down the tunnel," Gonff continued. "I heard Bugs shout at me to go get help, so I decided to come back here, knowin' there was a gatherin' of Corim."

Pepe winked at him. "And of course, your decision to come back 'ad nothing to do with ze pot of French onion soup and ze baguettes I was making today, mon ami."

"No, but I think I could manage some, matey!"

Bella rubbed huge paws across her eyes and sat back with a grunt of despair. "Well, here's another pretty pickle our friend Bugs has gotten himself into. Any suggestions?"

Amber clucked disapprovingly. "If I had my way, I'd leave the silly creature to stew his paws in Kotir awhile. That'd teach him a lesson."

Skipper whacked his rudderlike tail against the hearth. "Belay that kind o' talk, mate. You know that the little uns round here would have gone hungry many a time if not for Bugs and Gonff."

Foghorn Leghorn raised his wing. "Ah say, ah say, we should rescue Bugs. Ah'd be ashamed to call mahself a Toon, leavin' another Toon in Kotir prison."

"Let's put it to a vote," Bella said.

Pepe clapped his paws. "Well said! She ees not only beautiful, but she ees an excellent leader, too!" He was infatuated with Bella. Because she had a white stripe down her back, he thought she was a skunk like him.

By a show of paws, the vote to rescue Bugs was unanimous. Then there was a temporary respite for refreshment, while the assembly helped themselves to bowls of Pepe's onion soup and French bread.

"I've taught Bugs to use my lock-picking tools," Gonff said as they ate. "If we can get them to him somehow, he can use them to escape?"

"But how can we bring him the tools?" Bella pointed out. "If any of us approach Kotir, we'll just get thrown in the dungeons right alongside Bugs."

"Ah say, Ah know somethin' that might help us," Foghorn said. "Henry is back in Mossflower."

Henry was a hawk. When Henry was a boy, Foghorn had befriended him. It was Henry's dearest ambition to eat a chicken, but he didn't know that Foghorn was a chicken. Since Henry had no idea what a chicken looked like, Foghorn had told him that the animals at Kotir were chickens.

Now Henry was a full-grown hawk, not a little one like in the cartoons. He was the biggest animal in Mossflower, and the soldiers at Kotir lived in mortal terror of him, because he had eaten many of them. In fact, he was the one who took Ashleg's leg.

Henry would do anything Foghorn told him to do, so when the Corim leaders approached him and asked him to deliver Gonff's tools to Bugs in the cells, he was happy to oblige. "I can eat a couple of chickens while I'm there, right?" he said.

"If you can catch 'em," Foghorn chuckled.

"Okay, Foggy! I'm on my way!"

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Ashleg was standing guard on the walls of Kotir when he heard wings flapping overhead. He recognized that sound. Only one bird in Mossflower had wings that made a noise like that. "Henry! Oh my God!"

"I want a chicken now!"

Henry swooped and dived, but Ashleg managed to scramble through the trapdoor that led back inside and slam it behind him in the nick of time. Henry crashed into the door face first.

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"I spy, with my little eye, somethin' that's gray," Bugs said.

"Is it the wall?" Martin asked.

"Yep. How'd ya guess?"

"Because it's always the wall!"

"Yeah, there's really nothin' else in here."

Something rattled through the slit window. In the semigloom they groped about in the straw on the floor until Bugs found the object. "This is somethin' my pals sent me to help us get outta here," he said.

Martin could not conceal his disappointment. "Goodness me, a stick. How helpful. We could take this place single pawed with a stick. What a useful thing to send us."

"It ain't a stick, Doc. Look!" Bugs undid the thin wire that ran around the object, revealing it to be a rolled-up piece of paper with a slim blade inside. He read the paper out loud.

"Bugs, here are my tools. Leave by the woodland side of Kotir at the first light of dawn. Skipper an' Amber will be waitin' to cover for ya. Gonff."

"Who is Gonff?" Martin asked.

"Oh, you'll like him, Doc. He's an expert mousethief an' my best friend. He sent us this wire an' this blade we can use to pick the lock on our cell door. Once we get out, our friends Skipper an' Amber will escort us to safety. Skipper is an otter and Amber is a squirrel."

"But they don't know about me, do they? They probably think they're just rescuing you."

"Don't worry, we'll work somethin' out. The Council of Resistance in Mossflower will be glad to have a trained warrior on their side."

Martin clasped Bugs' paw warmly. "Okay, so what do we do now?"

"When is the next guard patrol due?" Bugs asked.

"In about an hour's time, regular as clockwork since I've been here. After that, there'll be nobody by until two hours after dawn when they bring the bread and water."

"Good, that gives us time for a little rest," Bugs said, stretching out comfortably on the straw.

Martin lay down, willing himself to relax against the floodtide of excitement building inside him. "You know, Bugs, you don't really sound like a hare."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Well, all the hares I've known were all Britishy and said 'What what' at the end of every sentence, but you talk more like a New York Boston guy."

"Well, I was born in Manhattan, so I'm from the other side of the pond, Doc. And I'm only half hare. My mother was a hare an' my father was a rabbit."

"Okay, that makes sense." They settled down to wait for dawn.