“I bet you never thought I’d do it,” he meowed, so quietly Finchstar could hardly hear him over the screeches and yowls from below.
“Do what? Attack four Clans when they came in peace to a Gathering, with elders among them?” Finchstar hissed. “No, Ripplestar. I never thought you’d be as cowardly as that.”
The black-and-orange cat lashed his tail. “Hardly the actions of a coward, to take on all four Clans at once!”
Slipping his claws free, Finchstar sprang at Ripplestar, bringing him down on top of the rock with a muffled thud. The ShadowClan leader squirmed around until he was lying on his back, then raked Finchstar’s belly with his hind paws. Finchstar sank his claws deeper into the loose fur around Ripplestar’s neck, feeling the slender bones underneath.
“Call off your cats!” he spat. “This attack is wrong!”
Ripplestar scrabbled to his feet and glared at Finchstar. “I wouldn’t call an easy victory wrong,” he gloated. “Look at your precious cats now.”
Finchstar risked a sideways look. The battle was slowing; many cats were slumped on the silver grass, bleeding and motionless. ShadowClan warriors paced among them, ready to lash out if any cat stirred.
“No!” Finchstar yowled. “You can’t do this!”
He jumped at Ripplestar but his hind paws skidded on the icy rock, and the ShadowClan leader stepped easily out of the way.
“So you keep telling me,” Ripplestar observed. “But I seem to have done it anyway! Looks like I don’t have to listen to you, Finchstar.”
For a heartbeat, the hollow glowed bright white, outlining every leaf, every blade of grass, every whisker. Then the air cracked, and the two cats on the rock flung themselves down, clinging to the stone as it trembled beneath them. Finchstar pressed his face into the cold surface and waited for the roll of thunder to fade away. A storm in leaf-bare? But there were no clouds. The moon was out....
“Finchstar!” His name was barely a whisper, drowned by another clap of thunder slamming into the forest.
Finchstar forced himself to lift his head. His eyes were still dazzled by the first flash of lightning and he had to blink to see clearly. The clearing was much darker than before, so dark he couldn’t see Ripplestar. The moon had vanished. The sky was covered with thick black clouds.
Finchstar shook his head, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He could make out the trees now and the shape of the Great Rock beneath him. But still no Ripplestar.
“Help … me....”
A scratching sound came from the edge of the rock. Finchstar saw Ripplestar’s yellow eyes staring over the top and his black-and-orange paws.
“Hold on!” Finchstar yowled. He hurled himself across the stone, reaching out with his front paws to grab Ripplestar’s scruff and haul him to safety.
He was a mouse-length away when the sky burst open again, filling the air with blazing white light and letting out a roar that sounded like every tree in the forest was falling at once. Finchstar crashed down onto the rock and pressed his paws into his ears, trying to block the explosion of noise that bounced around the hollow. He heard a thin, terrified wail as Ripplestar lost his grip and plunged to the ground.
The clearing was silent. The cats still on their paws were staring at something Finchstar couldn’t see, at the foot of Great Rock. Then a heavily scarred gray warrior rushed forward.
“Ripplestar! No!”
Finchstar bowed his head. The ShadowClan leader must have been on his ninth life. He was young to die as a leader, but perhaps his battle-hungry career had used up the rest of his lives too quickly.
“Murderer!”
The gray warrior—Marshscar, the ShadowClan deputy, Finchstar suddenly realized—was glaring up at him.
“Come down here and let me avenge our leader’s death!” Marshscar snarled.
“I didn’t kill Ripplestar!” Finchstar told him, feeling the fur rise along his spine.
“Then who did?” the gray cat challenged.
Finchstar looked up at the bubbling clouds that hid the full moon. The truce had been broken the moment Ripplestar told his warriors to attack the unsuspecting Clans. Then the moon disappeared and a storm came, bringing thunder and lightning that shook the forest to its roots.
“StarClan killed him,” Finchstar announced. His paws trembled. Would his warrior ancestors forgive him for accusing them of cold-blooded murder? But the sky stayed quiet.
“StarClan has punished ShadowClan for breaking the truce and attacking on the night of a full moon,” Finchstar went on. “There is no clearer message they could send.”
A pale brown tabby from RiverClan stepped forward. “StarClan, forgive us all for fighting!” he yowled.
“From now on, the full moon will be honored by every Clan!” Dovestar called.
Finchstar stepped to the edge of the rock and raised his voice so every cat could hear him. There would be time afterward to tend to the wounded and carry them home. For now, he had to make sure this would never happen again.
“There will be a new rule in the warrior code!” he declared. “There will be no fighting at the time of the new moon. The truce is sacred and will be protected for every Gathering.”
StarClan, forgive us.
CODE ELEVEN
BOUNDARIES MUST BE CHECKED AND MARKED DAILY. CHALLENGE ALL TRESPASSING CATS.
Not all parts of the warrior code come from tragedy and conflict. Some, like this one, were needed to clear up a long-running misunderstanding and avoid the need for blood to be spilled.
Poppycloud’s Rule
The air was so still, Poppycloud could hear herself breathing. She waited with one paw raised, knowing the dried leaves would crackle loud as thunder as soon as she set it down. It was leaf-fall, and in SkyClan, with all its trees and little undergrowth, moving silently was almost impossible. The hair along her spine prickled as she strained to listen.
“Can you hear anything, Poppycloud? Can you, can you?” Bracken rustled behind her and she turned, resigned, as a small black-and-white cat exploded from the brittle stems.
“Yes, Mottlepaw, I can hear something,” she meowed.
The apprentice stopped dead and stared at her. “Really? What?”
“You!”
Mottlepaw’s tail drooped. “But I tried to be quiet, like you showed me.”
Poppycloud walked over to him and touched the tip of his ear with her nose. “I think we need to practice some more.”
Mottlepaw wriggled free and padded up to the border. “Why does Rowanstar make us come this way when he knows ThunderClan doesn’t like it?”
Poppycloud shrugged and nudged a piece of leaf off her tortoiseshell fur. “I think he likes to know if anything happens in our territory. If we just stuck to the best hunting areas, we’d never visit some places.”
“Like this one.” Mottlepaw’s voice was muffled as he stuck his head into a clump of long grass. “I can’t smell any birds anywhere!”
“That’s because you’re in ThunderClan territory!” came a snarl.
Poppycloud spun around. A broad-shouldered brown tom stood a fox-length away, his lip curled to reveal sharp yellow teeth.
“What a surprise!” he hissed. “SkyClan cats lurking on the border again. What’s wrong with your own territory?”
Poppycloud felt her hackles raise. “Nothing!” she retorted. “We have every right to go anywhere inside our borders.”
“Which your apprentice isn’t,” the ThunderClan warrior growled.
Mottlepaw pulled back from the clump of grass and stood with his head down, trembling.
“Mottlepaw, come over here,” Poppycloud ordered. The black-and-white apprentice shot toward her, swerving around the ThunderClan tom, who hissed as he went past.
“It was a mistake,” Poppycloud pointed out. “We weren’t trying to steal your prey.”
Ferns parted and another cat joined the brown warrior. She fixed her startlingly green gaze on Poppycloud. “Why are there always SkyClan cats snooping arou
nd here? Is your own Clan so bad that you want to join ours?”
“Never!” Poppycloud retorted. “We prefer not to chew through mouthfuls of fur when we’re eating our prey!”
The brown tom tipped his head to one side. “Oh, and feathers are so much tastier, are they?”
“Come on, Oatwhisker,” urged the she-cat. “We’re wasting our time. If these dumb cats want to spy on us, they won’t learn much from the bushes around here. I don’t think I’ve even been to this part of the territory before.”
Oatwhisker narrowed his eyes at Poppycloud. “Don’t think this is over. I’m going to tell Lionstar I caught SkyClan cats hanging around the border yet again, and I wouldn’t want to be in your pelts if he thinks you’re planning an attack.”
He stalked out of the clearing with his green-eyed Clanmate. As soon as they had vanished, Poppycloud turned to Mottlepaw. “How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t go into another Clan’s territory!”
Mottlepaw sniffed. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he complained. “Anyway, it’s so hard to tell where our territory turns into ThunderClan’s. It’s not like there’s a river in the way!”
Poppycloud opened her jaws to taste the air. Mottlepaw was right: The scents of the different Clans were very faint here, so she couldn’t blame her apprentice for straying too far. “Come on,” she meowed. “We’d better go and tell Rowanstar what happened, in case ThunderClan makes a fuss.”
“He won’t be angry with me, will he?” Mottlepaw whimpered. “I already had to put mouse bile on the elders’ ticks after I scared Morningmist’s kits with my tiger roar.”
“I’ll tell him it was an honest mistake,” Poppycloud promised. “Just try not to get into any more trouble on the way back.”
“Tell Rowanstar that we wish to speak with him.”
A buzz of curiosity ran through the camp.
“Who’s that?”
“ThunderClan cats!”
“What do they want?”
“Have they come to get me?”
Poppycloud looked down at Mottlepaw, who was staring at her with his blue eyes stretched wide. “I’m sure they haven’t come to get you,” she meowed. “But I’m glad we told Rowanstar what happened on the border.”
Oddfoot, a brown tabby who was born with one of his paws twisted inward, led the visitors into the clearing. A massive tom with long ginger hair padded beside him, flanked by the green-eyed gray tabby Poppycloud had met on the border and a dark brown tom who looked as if he expected to be jumped on at any moment. Poppycloud drew in her breath sharply: This must be serious if Lionstar had come himself.
Nightmask, the SkyClan deputy, met them in the center of the camp. “Lionstar, Greeneyes,” he greeted them with a nod of his head. Poppycloud stared at the gray tabby with new interest; she hadn’t realized this was the recently appointed ThunderClan deputy.
“You are, of course, welcome to speak with Rowanstar. Will he know what this is about?”
Greeneyes curled her lip. “It’s about your warriors spying on us!” she hissed.
Lionstar flicked his tail, warning her to stay quiet. “I am concerned that there are always SkyClan cats on the edge of our territory, and I want to know what they’re doing there.”
“I think you’ll find they’re on the edge of our territory,” came a deep voice. Rowanstar, his black-and-brown coat gleaming in the weak sunlight, padded out of his den. “So there shouldn’t be any problem.”
“But there’s nothing there!” Lionstar argued. “Nothing but the start of ThunderClan’s territory.”
Rowanstar glanced at Poppycloud. “From what I hear, it’s not always easy to tell where your territory begins. Perhaps if you visited your border more often, your scent would be clearer.”
Lionstar’s hackles raised, swelling him to nearly twice his size. Mottlepaw shrank behind Poppycloud with a whimper.
“ThunderClan should not have to patrol its boundaries to make sure SkyClan isn’t trespassing!” Lionstar growled.
“If you patrolled more often, there would be less danger of us crossing the border!” Rowanstar flashed back.
Greeneyes stepped forward. “The warrior code says nothing about it being a Clan’s responsibility to keep cats out! It should be obvious that other Clans aren’t allowed across the border.”
“Well, maybe the code should say something!”
All eyes turned on Poppycloud. She snapped her mouth shut, feeling as if her pelt were on fire. Did I really just say that in front of the leaders of two Clans?
“Yay! Go, Poppycloud!” Mottlepaw cheered behind her. Poppycloud silenced him with a glare.
Rowanstar put his head to one side. “That’s an interesting theory, Poppycloud. Go on.”
Poppycloud felt a small nose nudge her from behind. She shot a fierce glance at her apprentice before padding into the clearing. Every cat watched her. Greeneyes looked scornful; this made Poppycloud square her shoulders and tilt her chin defiantly toward the ThunderClan deputy.
“I … I just think all the quarreling about SkyClan being on the ThunderClan border would be cleared up if every Clan did the same as Rowanstar wants us to do: have regular patrols around the entire territory. That way, the scents of each Clan would be left behind more frequently, not just in the places where the cats hunt most often, and boundaries would be more clearly marked. Any cats that crossed over the border could be punished, because it wouldn’t be a mistake.”
Rowanstar nodded. “And if both ThunderClan and SkyClan patrols regularly went along our shared border, then neither Clan could be accused of spying or trying to trespass.” He flicked his tail at Poppycloud. “That’s a great idea.”
Lionstar hissed. “So you think the warrior code should tell us how to defend our territories, do you? What kind of leader would be mouse-brained enough to need instructions like that?”
“The kind of leader who thinks that a patrol walking along their own boundaries is planning an attack,” Rowanstar meowed smoothly.
“Well, I think it’s a ridiculous idea,” sniffed Greeneyes. “The Clans have lived in these territories for more moons than any cat can remember, and we’ve never needed the warrior code to tell us how to protect our borders. Clearly some cats are more mouse-brained than others.”
Slanting her eyes at Poppycloud, she turned away with a huff.
Lionstar started to turn and follow his deputy, but Rowanstar called out, “Wait!” When Lionstar faced him again, the SkyClan leader announced, “I shall put forward Poppycloud’s idea at the next Gathering. We should let the other leaders decide—not because I think any Clan cat needs to be reminded that their territories should be well defended, but because it will stop needless suspicion over border patrols.”
Lionstar stretched one forepaw and let his claws slide out. “You do realize that if the other leaders agree to this ridiculous rule, then I’ll be allowed to tear the fur off any of your apprentices who just happen to cross our border?”
From the corner of her eye, Poppycloud saw Mottlepaw back into the brambles that surrounded the apprentices’ den, until only his white patches could be seen.
Rowanstar didn’t flinch. “And we’d punish any ThunderClan cats who trespassed,” he meowed. “The situation will be clear and fair—like the boundaries.”
Lionstar spun around and started to stalk toward the entrance. “Until the next Gathering, Rowanstar. We’ll see what the other Clans think of your idea then.”
“Indeed we will,” Rowanstar murmured as the ThunderClan cats were swallowed up by the bracken.
Poppycloud watched until the fronds of bracken stopped trembling. If this becomes part of the warrior code, I will live forever! She shook her head to chase away such huge dreams and looked for Mottlepaw. Adding rules to the warrior code was kit’s play compared with trying to keep her apprentice in line. But he was a quick learner and would one day make a warrior to be proud of.
Not that I could be any prouder of him than I am already, as his mot
her as well as his mentor. With a soft purr of amusement, she went in search of her unruly son.
Who Goes There? Whitestorm Teaches Border Tactics
Once the borders were fixed, cats of neighboring Clans started to meet frequently across their borders when on patrol. It became apparent that cats of all Clans must know how to handle disputes. Here’s Whitestorm training a group of ThunderClan apprentices in border tactics.
Is every cat here? Firepaw, Graypaw, Ravenpaw, Sandpaw, and Dustpaw? Dustpaw, stop trying to push Firepaw into the brambles. I’m not blind; I can see what you’re doing. Firepaw, go to the other end of the line. Sandpaw, he does not have fleas! Stand still, all of you.
As Lionheart told you, we’re going to practice border defense today. You can be the patrol, and I’ll be a deputy from another Clan who’s crossed the boundary. Who’d like to lead the patrol? Don’t look so terrified, Ravenpaw. I won’t make you be the leader if you don’t want to be. Graypaw, why don’t you have first turn? If you could just pick up that stick in your mouth and use it to draw a line across the sand, we’ll call that the border. Sandpaw, it doesn’t matter that the line is wobbly. Boundaries aren’t whisker-straight, are they? So, you’re on that side, walking along on a dawn patrol. Off you go, patrol!
Did you really need to yawn like that, Graypaw? Oh, I see, it’s because it’s the dawn patrol, and you’re tired. Well, let’s pretend you all had a really good night’s sleep and are full of energy. Now, what should you be doing? Yes, sniffing, tasting the air—what for? That’s right, Sandpaw. ThunderClan border marks. And what else? Yes, Firepaw. The border marks of the other Clan. But only where the two borders meet. Beside the river and the Thunderpath, it would be bad news to find any scents of RiverClan or ShadowClan, because it would mean they’d crossed over from their side. So keep sniffing.