Battle for Wonderland

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The rain was soaking into her new waterproof coat, Hatter had paid twenty gold coins for it, but then it was Wonderland, and she should have known better.

There were times when Hatter absolutely hated being a bounty hunter, there were times when she hated her country,

She wiped water out of her eyes and clicked the reigns.

The wagon she sat in was harnessed to two black work horses, Hatter sat under a small awning that did nothing to protect her from the wild rain. Thunder crashed and lightning rolled around in the background, and the wind did it's best to sweep away her fedora.

She pulled down her fedora closer over her eyes, driving a wagon is a lot harder than it looked. The dirt road had turned to soup, and the potholes weren't helping at all. The last thing she needed was a setback in the ditch.

The wagon thumped almost methodically in three potholes, one right after the other. She grit her teeth, ignoring the blisters that were forming on her hands, and kept on.

Through the grey and mist of the winter storm the dark shadow of Wonderland's capital was looming

Hatter was still several miles away, but it comforted her to know that she would be sleeping in a bed tonight, rather than in the back of wagon with the body of the man she had been hired to kill.

"This is the worst time of year to be bounty hunting." Hatter said to the horses. "I mean really. Who picks the rainy season and says, 'Oh this sounds like a great time to go and find a known psycho assassin and bring his decapitated body halfway across the country.

Me I guess."

Hatter growled and then coughed and shook her head, causing rain drops to flood her face. Then she heard a creak, and the whole wagon jolted. Hatter cursed, trying to reign in the horses.

"Woah now girls, come on. Calm down! There you go."
She looked back and saw that one of the wheels had broke, cursing again she tied the reigns down and jumped out of the wagon.
The mud came almost up to her knees, she walked to the back of the wagon, hunkering down she felt the wheel, it was broken almost perfectly in two.

"Now how the hell am I supposed to fix this?" She stood up and kicked the wheel.

It was still several miles to the city, and in this storm there was very little chance anyone would come by, Hatter knew she had enough tools to patch up the wheel enough to limp to the city, but in this weather it would be difficult.

She stomped back to the horses, "I am not sitting in there with that body." She told them.

After a couple of hours the rain began to lessen, and finally it was only a soft mist that came from the sky, and Hatter set to work repairing her wheel. It took her a lot longer then she would have liked, and now she was running out of time. Her deadline to bring in the body was rapidly approaching, and if she missed it...

"There's no telling what kind of a mood Duchess will be in."

Finally she was done and she jumped back on the wagon and set off, the moon was beginning to rise in the sky. Midnight. She was late.

Hatter swore, "Sometimes I hate this job, I really hate it. And I hate this season."

She spit on the ground.

"A person has to eat though." Hatter began to reason with herself, "Food prices being what they are. No wonder some people side with the bastard prince. Though he conveniently doesn't say how he will be able to help us with food."
One of the horses neighed and Hatter nodded her head, "Yes, yes. It's steep here. We must all be very careful, don't worry I have my eyes on the road."

She looked off her right shoulder, lining the road was a very rickety railing, doing it's best to warn, though not protect travelers, from the fifteen feet drop to woods below. But the railing was good news, it meant she was finally within the capitol's limits.

Ahead was the city's gates, being patrolled of course by soldiers with pointy metal helmets lined with red fur and carrying pikes, she was just barely going to make curfew.

The capital of Wonderland was Roujeque, it was home to the Red Palace and of course their majesties. Roujeque was under martial law since the last assassination attempt. The Queen and King were beyond paranoid, Hatter didn't blame them. If she had a insane step-brother who escaped prison, she would be paranoid too.

"Best not to have bastard sons." Hatter told the horse very seriously, "Never once seen that go well. In my villages there's been a couple of times that I recall. The baker's wife had a dimwit son, and we couldn't really tell who the father was. That didn't stop the baker from throwing out the kid. Cried outside his door for hours then it finally died. Nobody dared to take it..."

Hatter flicked the reigns again, "Come on horse. No need to daddle. Lots of food, straight ahead."

"Then of course, being a bastard, and then being strange on top doesn't help. I've never seen the man myself. They say he's all white, from his hair to his skin, his nails are clear and his eyes are pale too. Everyone says stuff though. I wonder how stories get started? The Albino.The White Rabbit. That's what they call him." Hatter laughed, "Why rabbit? That's what I want to know."

At the end of her talking she arrived at the gates, Hatter pulled the horses to a stop she stretched her arms and pulled out a small wood pipe, with her fingers she cleaned it out and knocked it against the side of the wagon. It was too wet to light, but it had become something of calming technique to get it out, clean it and put it in her mouth.

A soldier came up, "Papers."
Hatter grabbed a small coin purse out and took out a wad of papers.

The soldier took it and read over them, "It says here you're a bounty hunter?"
Hatter's teeth clamped down on her pipe, she wanted to eat and sleep, "Yes genius, I'm a bounty hunter."

"I'll have to look in the back of your wagon. Wait here."

"Why can't you just take a look. It's just a dead body."
The soldier made a face, "I'll have to call for backup."
"Now see here-" She started to say.

"Ma'am if you wish to come inside the wall you must let me go and get backup."

Hatter didn't reply.

The soldier soon came back with a few other men, then they searched through her wagon. Twenty minutes later she was inside the wall, and the gate was closing for curfew.

"Made it just in time." A bystander said.
Hatter jumped off her wagon and nodded, "Yeah, no thanks to those bumbling fools."

"Someone tried to bring in havish earlier." The man said.

"Ah." Hatter said. "Damn fool."

Hatter snorted, havish was the new hype. A small root that had once been considered a useless weed had now been discovered, when dried and smoked, to have pleasant hallucinatory effects. It was now being banned from most cities, because of the wide spread and wild use. This was one of the reasons why all wagons and all people were stopped and searched at city gates. That and with the war that was soon to come, spies and killers were slipping in and out, killing important people. Wonderland was going mad.