Bluepaw shivered as another vicious gust of wind roared down the ravine and howled through the camp. “Do you think the weather is a sign?” she wondered.
“I think we’ve had enough signs for one day,” Moonflower muttered. She suddenly flashed her amber gaze at her kits. “Promise you’ll steer clear of the fighting! There’ll be time for being heroes when you’re bigger and stronger and better trained.” Her eyes blazed, and Bluepaw found herself nodding.
“Snowpaw?”
Snowpaw dipped her head. “Okay.”
Bluepaw saw some of the tension leave her mother’s hunched shoulders.
“Not allowed in the fighting, eh?” Stormtail padded over and flicked Bluepaw’s ear with his tail-tip. “Next time, perhaps.”
Moonflower flashed him a sharp look. “This is going to be a dangerous battle,” she reminded him.
Bluepaw’s belly turned cold.
“We’ve never attacked a Clan’s camp before,” Moonflower went on. “We’ll be fighting the whole Clan in a place they know and we don’t.”
Stormtail nudged her shoulder. “But we’ll have the element of surprise,” he meowed. “And we’ll be fighting at close quarters.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“Up close, WindClan’s nimbleness will count for nothing. ThunderClan strength will have the advantage.”
Bluepaw narrowed her eyes. That’s not what you told Dappletail.
Moonflower lowered her gaze. “I suppose.”
“Don’t worry,” Stormtail meowed. “This is a battle we’ll win.”
“ThunderClan warriors! To me!”
Bluepaw’s heart lurched as Pinestar yowled until his voice echoed off the trees. The ThunderClan leader flicked his tail in signal. “Let’s go!”
Excitement crackled like lightning as the raiding party surged toward the swaying gorse tunnel. Bluepaw felt the breeze from their rushing pelts and tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
Snowpaw and Moonflower headed after them.
“Come on.” Stonepelt nudged Bluepaw forward.
Wanting one last look at the camp, Bluepaw glanced backward as she raced after Snowpaw. There was just enough light to see Thistlekit peer from the nursery, then disappear, his eyes flashing in anger as he was dragged back into the safety of the brambles.
Weedwhisker sat beside Mumblefoot and Larksong like owls among the shivering branches of the fallen tree, while Patchpaw and Fuzzypelt paced the dark clearing. Tawnyspots and Windflight were climbing onto Highrock—ears pricked, pelts ruffled—and Goosefeather was disappearing into the shadows beyond the fern tunnel.
“Goosefeather’s not coming!” Bluepaw gasped, catching up with Snowpaw.
“I guess he needs to stay in his den, preparing for any wounded cats,” Snowpaw guessed.
Her words sent a chill through Bluepaw. Wounded! “But he told us to attack,” she persisted. Shouldn’t he be with them?
Stonepelt growled behind her, “Perhaps he got a sign from StarClan, warning him to stay out of harm’s way.”
“At least we’ve got Featherwhisker,” Moonflower called over her shoulder as they burst from the tunnel.
The medicine cat apprentice followed them out with a leaf wrap in his jaws. Bluepaw wondered what herbs it contained. They must be strong, because she could smell their sharp scent.
“Hurry!” Stonepelt ran at Bluepaw’s heels, pushing her pace.
The rest of the patrol was already charging for the bottom of the ravine. Bluepaw felt a prickle of worry. Could she climb the steep slope in the dark, with the wind howling around the rocks? She followed Snowpaw up the first tumble of stone, feeling Stonepelt pressing behind her. He wouldn’t let her slip. Claws unsheathed, she clambered upward, following the stream of cats that passed like shadows over the stones.
Featherwhisker’s herbs were working. Her muscles felt strong, and each jump seemed to take her farther than she anticipated. Her heart was racing, but with excitement and not fear. She could sense the anticipation of her Clanmates. Today a great victory would be won. Upward she pushed, until with a final bound she leaped to the top of the ravine. Without pausing for breath, she pelted into the woods.
Tree trunks blurred around her as Bluepaw ran with her Clan, weaving around bushes in the predawn light. The wind howled, whisking the trees as though they were no more than grass, and shaking their great branches until twigs and leaves rained down. Bluepaw could make out the white patches of Dappletail’s coat ahead as it flashed among the trees. Sunfall’s fur was pale in the half-light, while Adderfang, Pinestar, and Stormtail blended with the shadows, visible only by their movement, like water flowing among reeds.
“Stream ahead,” Moonflower warned.
The cats slowed, bunching, before leaping the glittering water one at a time and racing away through the trees. Bluepaw tensed as her turn neared. My legs aren’t long enough. She teetered at the edge while Moonflower leaped across; the silver-gray cat landed delicately on the far side and turned to look back.
“It’s not deep!” she encouraged, her mew almost drowned by the roar of the wind.
“But it’s wet!” Bluepaw wailed.
Snowpaw fidgeted beside her, her paws slipping on the muddy bank.
Stonepelt nudged Bluepaw from behind. “Go on,” he urged. “You’ll make it.”
Bluepaw focused on the far bank and took a deep breath. Screwing up her muscles, she leaped. Stonepelt gave her a helpful shove with his muzzle, and Bluepaw stretched out her forepaws, managing to grasp the far bank and scramble up beside Moonflower.
Snowpaw was hunched on the other bank, eyes wide as she prepared to jump.
“You can do it!” Bluepaw called.
“I’m coming!” Snowpaw jumped, but her graceful leap turned into a clumsy flop as her hind paws skidded on loose leaves and she splashed belly-first into the stream.
“Mouse dung!” Snowpaw struggled to her paws with the water rushing around her legs, then scrambled out.
Bluepaw ducked as Snowpaw shook the freezing water from her pelt.
“Bad luck.” Stonepelt landed lightly behind them.
“Hurry!” Moonflower commanded. Their Clanmates had disappeared into the forest.
Only Sparrowpelt had waited. He was peering from the bushes up ahead. “I wondered where you’d got to,” he meowed as they caught up. He saw Snowpaw’s drenched pelt and shook his head. “Running will warm you up,” he told her before speeding off again.
Bluepaw fought to catch her breath as they pelted onward. At least she wasn’t soaked to the skin. Poor Snowpaw looked like a drowned rat bounding alongside her. The cold wind was beginning to fluff up her fur, but even the running hadn’t stopped the snowy-white apprentice’s teeth from chattering.
At last they spotted their Clanmates ahead. They had slowed and were trekking in single file. The trees had thinned out, and beyond them Bluepaw saw a smooth, wide path snaking through the woods, glimmering with shining shadows.
The river!
They caught up and tagged onto the end of the patrol. The river was huge, as wide as the ThunderClan camp, stretching endlessly in each direction. So much water, rolling and tumbling, almost black as it swirled between the banks.
Moonflower and Snowpaw padded a few paw steps ahead. Bluepaw stayed beside her mentor.
“That’s RiverClan territory.” Stonepelt nodded across the water.
Bluepaw sniffed and smelled a fishy stench, familiar from the Gathering. It clung like fog to the bushes.
“That smell is their marker,” Stonepelt whispered. “This bank is RiverClan territory, too, though they rarely cross it when the water’s this cold.”
Cross it? “They swim in that?” Bluepaw had heard that RiverClan cats could swim, but she couldn’t imagine any cat being mouse-brained enough to try waters that churned so darkly and relentlessly through the forest.
Stonepelt nodded. “Like fish.”
Bluepaw shivered and peered into the trees on the far bank.
“Is this the only way to WindClan territory?” she breathed.
“If we want to stay hidden,” Stonepelt explained. “If we went through Fourtrees, we’d be spotted easily.”
Bluepaw’s heart quickened. “What about RiverClan patrols?” She glanced at the river, expecting a cat to crawl out from the dark water at any moment.
“Too early.” Stonepelt sounded confident, but he didn’t look at her and she wondered if he was just trying to calm her.
She felt a glimmer of relief as the path veered deeper into the forest, away from the water’s edge. But her relief didn’t last long. The trail climbed steeply, rocks jutting between bushes, trees clinging to the slope with roots wound through stony soil. Before long, Bluepaw heard a roaring even more thunderous than the wind. She tensed. “What’s that?”
“The gorge,” Stonepelt told her.
The noise grew as their path seemed to take them straight toward it.
“What’s the gorge?” Bluepaw whispered, hardly wanting to know.
“Where the river falls down from the moorland and cuts between two cliffs of rock. The path into WindClan territory runs beside it.”
Oh, StarClan!
Ahead she could see a gap in the trees where the forest floor seemed split in two as though a giant claw had scraped a furrow. Bluepaw unsheathed her claws and gripped the earth with each step, as Pinestar led his Clanmates along a perilous trail at the edge of the gorge. Hardly daring to breathe, she peered over the cliff and saw a torrent of white water, churning and boiling beneath it. She wrenched her gaze away and focused on Moonflower’s familiar pelt, following her paw steps and trying to ignore the sucking water below.
At last the sheer cliffs eased into muddy banks, and the river flowed smoothly, winding unhurriedly between thin trees and low, spiky bushes. The ThunderClan cats fell out of single file and bunched together, their pelts moving as one, like the shadow of a cloud passing over the land. All around them, dawn washed the moor with soft yellow light. Barren, gorse-specked hills rose in the distance.
Bluepaw tasted the air. RiverClan tang was being replaced by an earthier smell. “Is that where we’re going?”
Stonepelt nodded. “We’ve crossed the border into WindClan territory.” He flicked his tail toward a dip in the land where the billowing bushes gave way to heather as the ground rose and rolled up into moorland.
As the soft grass turned to springy, rough-coated peat, Pinestar turned and signaled with his tail, whipping it across his muzzle. Bluepaw understood that from now on, they must stay silent. She smelled markers so strong that she could taste the musky, peat-tainted stench.
WindClan.
As they climbed the hillside, the grass streamed like water in the wind and Bluepaw pictured again the vole’s fur, flat and splayed. Her breath caught in her throat as the storm howled around them. Her Clanmates seemed suddenly small and frail against the wide moorland that rolled away on every side. Ears flat, they padded onward, disappearing and reappearing among the swaths of quivering heather.
“I stick out like a blossom in a mud puddle,” Snowpaw whispered. She was right. Her white pelt looked strange among the earthy colors of the moorland.
“Hush!” Sparrowpelt hissed back at them, and Snowpaw flattened her ears.
Boulders began to dot the hillside, jutting from the earth like rotten teeth. At the top of the rise, the wind whipped more viciously against Bluepaw’s pelt, and she felt the first sharp drops of rain. Pinestar had halted and was staring into the dip ahead. Bluepaw followed his gaze toward boulders and heather and gorse.
“WindClan’s camp,” Stonepelt breathed into her ear.
Bluepaw blinked. Where?
Pinestar was heading toward them. Featherwhisker fell in beside him and beckoned to Swiftbreeze to join them. “You see that rock over there?” the ThunderClan leader meowed, nodding toward a stone sticking out of the earth, nearly as big as Highrock. “That’s where you’ll wait.” His gaze flicked from Bluepaw to Snowpaw. “Do you understand?”
They both nodded.
“Featherwhisker and Swiftbreeze will wait with you.” Pinestar glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ll send a runner if we get into trouble. Follow his orders exactly and without question.”
Blood roared in Bluepaw’s ears, blocking the howling of the wind.
This was it.
The battle was about to begin.
She followed Swiftbreeze, her paws heavy as stones, to the boulder Pinestar had indicated. It was smooth at one end as though it had been rubbed away by the wind, but sharp as fox-teeth at the other.
Snowpaw padded alongside her. “Do you think he’ll send for us?”
Bluepaw shrugged. She wanted to help her Clan but hoped they wouldn’t need help. Perhaps StarClan would give them a bloodless victory.
Featherwhisker padded behind them, his jaws still clasping the bundle of herbs. He dropped them as they reached the jagged shelter of the rock. Bluepaw crouched down, relieved to be out of the battering wind. Then she remembered something. We didn’t wish good luck to Moonflower. She hadn’t even looked at her! Bluepaw darted from behind the rock, desperate to see her mother’s amber eyes once more, to know that everything would be fine, but the cats had disappeared over the rise.
“Get back here!” Swiftbreeze’s mew was fierce, and Bluepaw felt a tug on her tail.
“I just wanted to say—” Bluepaw tried to defend herself.
“This is a battle,” Swiftbreeze growled. “You follow orders.”
Bluepaw stared at her paws.
Swiftbreeze sighed, her tone softening as she spoke again. “It’s for your own safety and the safety of your Clan.”
They waited wordlessly as the air grew lighter. A bird lifted from the heather and struggled against the wind. Bluepaw glanced at Snowpaw, worried by the darkness that shadowed her sister’s gaze. The WindClan cats would be rising now, stirring from their nests, unaware of the fury about to be unleashed on them. She felt a stab of sympathy for them, but then she remembered Goosefeather’s prophecy. WindClan must be beaten if ThunderClan was to survive. This was a battle that had to be fought.
The thought roused her spirits, and she lifted her chin. Remembering what she’d learned while gathering moss, she took a few swipes at the air, imagining she was fighting a WindClan warrior.
Snowpaw broke into a purr. “You look like you’re gathering cobwebs!”
“See if you can do better!” Bluepaw challenged.
“Hush!” Swiftbreeze commanded, and Bluepaw sat down guiltily. The tabby-and-white warrior was straining hard to listen above the wind. The rain fell harder, cold and sharp as ice against Bluepaw’s soft pelt. How did WindClan bear to live up there without the shelter of the forest? She wished she were back there now, safe beneath the canopy while the storm raged high in the treetops.
A screech of warning suddenly ripped the air, and the moor seemed to explode with furious yowls and screams that rose above the wind. Bluepaw’s eyes widened as shock pulsed through her. She recognized the aggressive screech of Adderfang and the agonized wail of Dappletail. Looking at Featherwhisker, Bluepaw saw that the medicine cat apprentice had closed his eyes and was muttering to himself; words were tumbling fast from his mouth, whispered too quietly to hear.
Was he praying to StarClan? Bluepaw leaned close, straining to hear.
“Comfrey for bones, cobweb for bleeding, nettle for swelling, thyme for shock…”
He was reciting cures for battle injuries.
Reality hit her like a savage gust of wind. Down there in the camp, blood was flowing. Warrior fought warrior with claws unsheathed and teeth bared. Bluepaw stared at Snowpaw.
Her littermate’s fur was on end, her ears stretched to hear every sound. “Was that Sparrowpelt?” she breathed as a furious howl carried over the wind.
Another hideous screech came in reply.
Bluepaw began to shake. It sounded like Stonepelt. Was he attacking or trying to defend himself?
Screech
after screech rent the stormy air until Bluepaw felt sick from the sound.
“Can’t we do anything?” she pleaded with Swiftbreeze.
“We must wait,” Swiftbreeze answered darkly. The warrior jerked her head around as paws pounded toward them. Bluepaw spun, expecting to see a WindClan patrol skid around the corner. She readied herself to face them, hackles raised.
But it was Robinwing.
“Come quickly!” she hissed. “Leopardpaw’s been wounded!”
CHAPTER 9
Swiftbreeze stiffened, her ears flat. “Leopardpaw?”
“Claw wound,” Robinwing told her. “Bleeding badly. She needs to be taken away, and we can’t spare any of the fighting warriors.”
Swiftbreeze nodded, and her round gaze hardened. “Come with us,” she ordered Bluepaw.
“I should come.” Featherwhisker picked up his herbs.
“No.” Swiftbreeze shook her head. “We can’t risk you being injured.”
“What about me?” Snowpaw offered, eyes shining.
“One apprentice will be enough.” Swiftbreeze flashed Snowpaw a look that she did not argue with. Instead she backed away, dipping her head.
“I’ll wait with Featherwhisker.”
“Stay close,” Swiftbreeze told Bluepaw. She darted from the rock after Robinwing, out into the lashing rain. Bluepaw screwed up her eyes and kept as close to Swiftbreeze’s flank as she could, feeling for her with her whiskers and pelt when the rain blinded her. The grass was slippery beneath her paws, and her tail was whipped up over her back by the wind.
Without warning, Swiftbreeze halted. Bluepaw slithered to a stop beside her. Blinking, she saw the ground drop away in front of her. A steep slope led down to a wall of brambles, much thicker than the gorse leading into ThunderClan’s camp. On the far side of the brambles, the ground flattened out. The scents were much stronger now, and Bluepaw knew that this must be the WindClan camp, its central clearing open to the sky.
Her eyes stretching wide in horror, Bluepaw watched as the battle raged. Screeches and yowls ripped through the howling wind. Blood stained the ground and frothed in red puddles, lathered by the rain. Fur, heavy with flesh, flew in clumps and snagged on the brambles. Bluepaw narrowed her eyes, trying to pick out which cat was which among her Clanmates.