Even so, neither Crowfeather nor Nightcloud was an angry, hateful cat. So how had their son turned out to be so angry all the time, always ready to fight? Where had Breezepelt’s hatred come from?
A chill ran through Crowfeather from ears to tail-tip. What if Breezepelt is simply an evil cat?
“Don’t you see how desperately Breezepelt wants approval from his Clanmates?” Nightcloud went on in a low and furious voice. “That must be because he feels so distant from his own father — a cat who is supposed to love him!”
Crowfeather glanced away, fearing that Nightcloud might see revealed on his face the thought that was running through his mind.
I’m not sure I can love Breezepelt like a son. I’m not sure if I ever did.
“I understand why it was no good between you and me,” Nightcloud continued. “You never loved me, and I couldn’t bind us together as a family.” Her voice caught, and she looked away for a moment. Then she turned back to him. “But that’s not important now. Breezepelt is what matters, and if his own father is so dismissive of him, so quick to bicker with him — well, it might give the rest of our Clanmates the impression that he can’t be trusted. And if that happens, and he still hasn’t been properly accepted back into the Clan, it might push him away again.” Her voice grew lower still, her fury fading into anxiety. “I couldn’t bear that. Could you?”
Crowfeather didn’t know how to respond. Nightcloud was right: Crowfeather hated to think that his son might even leave the Clan — or, worse, commit some act of treachery that would get him banished. But he couldn’t find the right words to respond to his former mate.
Nightcloud waited for a couple of heartbeats, then huffed out an exasperated breath and picked up her pace until she caught up with the others. Crowfeather trudged along at the rear of the patrol, wondering whether any cat would allow him to forgive Breezepelt on his own terms, and in his own time.
If I ever can forgive him.
At the foot of the hill Breezepelt waited beside the nearest tunnel entrance. Harespring led the rest of the patrol to join him, halted a tail-length away from the dark, gaping hole.
“We’ll stick together until we reach that cave where several passages lead off,” Harespring announced. “After that, we’ll split up. Crowfeather, you go with Heathertail. Nightcloud with Breezepelt. And Furzepelt, you’re with me.”
“What then?” Crowfeather asked.
“That depends on what we find,” the Clan deputy replied. “But we’ll meet back here at the entrance in… oh, in about the time it takes to do a dawn patrol. And may StarClan watch over us all.”
He turned and led the way with Furzepelt into the tunnels. Nightcloud and Breezepelt followed, leaving Crowfeather and Heathertail to bring up the rear.
Crowfeather padded along warily in the dimness. The tunnel stretched in front of them, wide and straight and lit by thin shafts of light that penetrated through chinks in the tunnel roof. His paws quickly started sticking to the damp and sandy floor, and he shivered as the raw cold probed into his pelt.
Opening his jaws to taste the air, Crowfeather couldn’t pick up any scents except for his own and his Clanmates’, and of moist moss and the occasional clump of fern growing from cracks in the rock. All he could hear was the sound of their own paw steps and their soft breath. But even though there seemed to be no danger, Crowfeather couldn’t stop his shoulder fur from rising. Uncomfortably, he remembered his glimpse of something white, and his dream of Ashfoot.
It seems quiet and safe, but I know there’s something down here…
The patrol did not take long to reach the cave Harespring had mentioned, its roof a mesh of interlacing tree roots. From here, several passages led off into darkness. Crowfeather knew that each of the tunnels sloped steeply downward, farther into the ground, and stifled a shiver at the thought of the weight of all that soil and rock above his head.
“This is where we split up,” Harespring announced. “Be careful, all of you.”
Breezepelt’s back was arched and his eyes were wide as Nightcloud began walking into one of the passages, but he held his head high and padded purposefully after her. Crowfeather thought that he was handling his fear well.
Heathertail beckoned Crowfeather with a jerk of her head. “Let’s go this way.”
Who died and made you Heatherstar? Crowfeather almost objected to being ordered around by a younger warrior who had once been his apprentice, but he decided it wasn’t worth it. He followed the tabby she-cat without comment.
Almost at once the light died away behind them and they padded along in complete darkness. Crowfeather pricked his ears, straining to hear the slightest sound from the passage ahead, and kept his jaws parted, tasting the air for the weird scent they had picked up outside on the day before. But at first there was nothing.
A flow of colder air told Crowfeather that they were passing a side tunnel, and from that direction he picked up the faint sound of lapping water.
“Is that the underground river we can hear?” he asked Heathertail, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt.
“Oh, no, we’re not nearly deep enough for that.” Heathertail’s voice was cheerful and confident. “Water often collects down there. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“You know your way around these tunnels very well,” Crowfeather remarked, impressed in spite of himself.
“Well…” There was a trace of guilt in Heathertail’s voice as she replied. “I often used to explore down here when I was an apprentice.”
“I never knew that!” Crowfeather’s pelt bristled with outrage. Back then he had felt Heathertail was a model apprentice, and now she was admitting she had done something that would have earned her tick duty for a whole moon if he had found out.
Heathertail let out a mrrow of laughter. “You weren’t supposed to know! You would have clawed my ears off.”
“You’re right. I would have. Now let’s get going.”
Crowfeather padded onward in the black night of the tunnels, his anxiety rising with every paw step. No star will ever shine here. Does that mean we are hidden from StarClan’s eyes? Once again he remembered his dream of Ashfoot, and how she hadn’t shone with the frosty glimmer of a StarClan warrior. Why hasn’t she gone to StarClan, where she belongs?
Farther and farther down they went, until Crowfeather began to pick up a new scent drifting on the dank air.
“What’s that?” he muttered.
He realized that Heathertail had halted when he blundered into her and felt her tail swipe across his face.
“It’s foul… like crow-food,” she mewed.
“It is crow-food,” Crowfeather decided after another sniff. “Something must be bringing prey into the tunnels and then leaving it to rot.”
“That’s mouse-brained!” Heathertail exclaimed. “What does that?”
“Not ghost cats, that’s for sure,” Crowfeather muttered. He wished he could take the lead, but the passage was too narrow for him to push past Heathertail, so he added, “Keep going. But be very careful.”
A few fox-lengths farther on, Crowfeather could tell from the echoing of their paw steps that they had emerged from the tunnel into a larger space. The stench of crow-food had grown and grown until it was almost overwhelming.
“Yuck!” Heathertail’s voice sounded as if she was going to be sick. “I’ve just stepped in something. It’s all slimy and horrible.”
“Something has been stockpiling prey here,” Crowfeather remarked. “So at least we know that there are animals in these tunnels. And whatever they are, they’re obviously not planning to move on anytime soon. There’s masses of prey.”