I survived!
Splashnose raced up to Driftkit. “Are you all right, precious?” she gasped, sniffing him all over.
Driftkit shrugged away. Fierce warriors didn’t get fussed over by their moms whenever they won a battle. “I’m fine,” he muttered.
Lilystar pricked her ears to follow the path of the owl. “It is a sign,” she declared. “StarClan gives our prey to us, and StarClan can take it away. We should give thanks to our warrior ancestors that we are able to eat at all. They provide every mouthful as well as our ability to hunt and feed ourselves. From the next Gathering, there will be an addition to the warrior code. Prey must be killed only to be eaten, and we must give thanks to StarClan for its life.
This is the way of the warrior.”
47
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Code Five
A KIT MUST BE AT LEAST SIX MOONS OLD
TO BECOME AN APPRENTICE.
It seems so obvious now that kits should not be allowed to fight until they are properly trained and strong enough to take on full-grown warriors. But it was not always like this.
It took the love of a mother cat to put a stop to the destruction of fragile lives.
The Queens Unite
“Attack! Jump! Swipe! Roll! No, rol.”
Daisytail winced as Specklepaw scrambled to his feet and shook his head, panting. He looked dazed, and there was a bead of blood welling at the tip of one ear. His mentor, Slatepelt, nudged him toward the other apprentice in the training circle, Adderpaw.
“Try again,” Slatepelt instructed gently.
Daisytail couldn’t watch as Specklepaw launched himself at his rival. It seemed like only a moon ago that his freckled, pale brown head had nuzzled into her belly searching for milk. Adderpaw had been training for several moons longer and he looked full-grown next to Specklepaw, whose head barely reached his shoulder.
There was a thud behind Daisytail, and she bit her tongue to stop herself from wailing out loud.
“Did you see that?” Specklepaw called. “Did you, Mom? Did you? I pushed Adderpaw right over!”
Daisytail turned around and forced herself to purr approvingly.
She could tell from the look exchanged by Adderpaw and Slatepelt that the older apprentice had deliberately let the little cat win.
“Well done, nutkin,” she called. A tuft of fur on Specklepaw’s head was sticking up, and she longed to go over and lick it flat. “You’ll be a warrior before you know it!” Before my milk has dried up, she added silently.
Slatepelt nodded to her. “He’s learning fast. Which is good, because it looks like we’ll be fighting ShadowClan again soon. They’ve been seen stealing rabbits in broad daylight, and Hazelstar won’t let them get away with it.”
Daisytail didn’t answer. Her kit was too small to take part in a real battle. He couldn’t even take on his own Clanmates, who would never try to rip his pelt, tear his eyes, claw his ears into shreds…
“Daisytail? Are you okay?” A dark brown face was peering anxiously out of the entrance to the nursery. Hawkfoot’s three kits were half a moon younger than Specklepaw: They would be made apprentices any day now and kept bouncing around their nest practicing their battle moves.
“There’s going to be another battle with ShadowClan,” Daisytail burst out. “I can’t let Specklepaw fight, I just can’t!”
“You don’t have a choice,” Hawkfoot pointed out. “He’s an apprentice now; this is what he’s being trained for.”
Daisytail lifted her head. “And if your kits are apprentices by then, will you let them go? Knowing they’ll face blood-hungry
ShadowClan warriors?”
49
Hawkfoot prodded a bramble tendril with her forepaw. “It’s our duty to provide the Clan with new warriors,” she mewed.
“And is it our duty to see those warriors die before they’re full-grown?” Daisytail challenged. She turned and stalked away from the nursery.
“Where are you going?”
“To put a stop to this once and for all.”
A bright orange sun stretched its paws over the edge of the moor, turning the sky above to pink and cream. Dew sparkled like starlight in the shadows cast by rocks and gorse bushes. On one of the rocks, Hazelstar stood to address his warriors. They stretched in a line on either side of him, facing the ShadowClan border, marked by a line of stunted trees.
“Warriors of WindClan!” Hazelstar cried. There was an indignant murmur from farther along the line, and Hazelstar’s whiskers twitched. “And apprentices! ShadowClan has stolen from us one too many times! We will teach them that WindClan’s borders are strong, they will be defended with claw and tooth, and our prey protected for our Clan alone.”
The cats yowled in support, and the grass flickered with the shadows of lashing tails.
Like an echo, a yowl came from the trees on the other side of the border. The grass beneath the trees stirred, and a line of ShadowClan warriors stepped out. A white-furred cat with hard green eyes stood in the center. “Are you sure about that, Hazelstar?” he sneered. “Some of your warriors look awfully small.”
His gaze swept over the smallest WindClan apprentices, who suddenly looked even tinier beside their Clanmates.
“I’d say we’re evenly matched, Blizzardstar,” Hazelstar replied calmly. He glanced toward the cats at the end of the ShadowClan line, some of whom still had a fuzz of kit fur around their ears.
Blizzardstar curled his lip. “We’ll put that to the test, shall we?” he snarled. “ShadowClan, attack!”
“STOP!” Daisytail leaped onto the rock she had been hiding behind. Hawkfoot scrambled up beside her. “We won’t let you fight!”
Blizzardstar stared at the queens in astonishment. “Are all your cats this scared of combat, Hazelstar?”
“It’s not fear,” called a cat from the ShadowClan line. She stepped into the open, her amber eyes reflecting the sun.
“Oakleaf? What in the name of StarClan are you doing?”
Blizzardstar demanded.
Daisytail jumped down from the rock and padded into the open space between the battle lines. The grass felt cool and springy beneath her paws; she would not let it turn red with her own kit’s blood. “We’re stopping this battle,” she announced. To her relief, her voice didn’t give away how much she was trembling inside. “Some of these apprentices are barely weaned from their mothers’ milk. They are too young to die, too young to fight, too young to be treated like full-grown warriors.”
The ShadowClan queen walked out to join her. “Daisytail came to see me with her Clanmate Hawkfoot two sunrises ago.
She told me that she didn’t want to let her kit go into battle when he was too small to fight his own Clanmates, and she asked me if I would let my kit die like this, too.” When Blizzardstar let out a questioning grunt, she turned and explained, “I met Daisytail once at a Gathering, when we had both just learned we were expecting kits. She remembered me and knew I would not want my kit to fight any more than she did.”
Hazelstar turned to Daisytail. “What are you saying?” he queried, looking baffled. “That we should never fight again? Do you really think that is how the Clans could live?”