“Thank you,” Thunderstar meowed, and leaped down from the Highrock. His eyes met Lightning Tail’s and he knew he and his deputy were thinking the same thing: They were definitely going to need that luck.
The next day, the two cats passed the Carrionplace as the sun was climbing the sky. The sun was warm, but a cool breeze ruffled Thunderstar’s fur. It was a good day for walking.
Lightning Tail stopped and sniffed the breeze. “Do you smell that?”
“The Carrionplace?” Thunderstar asked, his face wrinkling in disgust. “Sure, my nose isn’t broken.”
“No, not that.” Lightning Tail sniffed again. “It smells like those dogs. But something else…”
Thunderstar could smell it now, too, and he shuddered. “Strange cats. And blood. A lot of blood.”
Lightning Tail shifted nervously. “Maybe we should go another way.”
“No.” Thunderstar scented the air carefully. “It’s old scent. They’re not here anymore, not the cats or the dogs. We should see what happened.”
Following the stale scents, Thunderstar and Lightning Tail crossed a long stretch of open land until they came to a small dip in the ground.
“This was some kind of camp,” Lightning Tail said softly. There were the remains of several nests tucked beneath a barberry bush, but they had been torn apart, and the scent of the dogs was heavy in the air. A group of rogues must have lived here. Cat fear-scent was heavy, too, and Thunderstar’s pelt prickled uneasily.
“I hope they got away,” he said, but Lightning Tail was staring at a ragged bundle of brown fur on the other side of the bush.
“They didn’t. Not all of them,” he said.
They approached cautiously. Close up, they could see that the bundle of fur was a small brown she-cat, her face fixed in an expression of terror. She was dead. The scent of the dogs around her and the bloody toothmarks in her pelt made it all too clear how she had been killed. Thunderstar shuddered. It must have been a terrible way to die. And Violet Dawn could have died the same way, or any of the cats in ThunderClan, if they hadn’t been able to get to the trees in time.
“The other cats ran away and left her,” Lightning Tail mewed indignantly. “Fox-hearted rogues.”
“They were scared,” Thunderstar replied. “You’ve seen what these dogs are like.”
“If they were Clan cats, they would have fought to save their Clanmate,” Lightning Tail argued staunchly.
He was right. Thunderstar couldn’t imagine abandoning a Clanmate to this fate: He would have fought beside her, and, if there was no way to save her, he would never have left her body to lie outside the camp like crow-food. But he couldn’t blame the rogues for their terror.
“We should bury her,” he murmured. “We can at least give her that.”
Sunhigh passed as the two cats dug the rogue’s grave. They didn’t talk much as they dug, and dirt caked uncomfortably beneath Thunderstar’s claws. His heart felt as heavy as a stone: The rogue’s death made it clearer than ever how dangerous these dogs were, and how unlikely it was that Thunderstar and his Clanmates would be able to fight against them. Where would ThunderClan go, if they had to leave their comfortable camp in the ravine? And what if the dogs found them again after that?
The rogue’s body was light as they tumbled her into her grave, and Thunderstar’s chest ached with sorrow at how small she seemed. He bowed his head. “StarClan,” he said, “I don’t know who this cat was. She wasn’t a Clan cat, and so maybe she won’t be able to walk among you. But please help her to find her own hunting grounds.”
The shadows were getting longer and their steps were heavy by the time they reached the hill overlooking the strange Twolegplace. This time, the strangeness of the dead monsters seemed less important. The dogs were walking among them, weaving their way between the monsters and around the Twoleg dwelling they surrounded.
They were even bigger than Thunderstar remembered, and their stench wafted up to the cats so clearly that Thunderstar wanted to cover his nose and turn away. Their shoulders were broad, and bulging muscles moved under their short fur—they looked very strong.
“There are four of them now,” Lightning Tail muttered, and Thunderstar realized he was right—there was one more dog than there had been in the attack on ThunderClan’s camp. The new dog was even larger than the other three and, as the cats watched, he growled and snapped at one of his packmates. The smaller dog snarled back, and soon the two were rolling in the dirt, struggling and yelping as the other dogs barked.
“They don’t even like each other,” Thunderstar noted.
Suddenly, the door of the Twoleg dwelling slammed open with a bang and a pair of Twolegs burst out. They were jabbering loudly and angrily, and one grabbed a piece broken off from one of the monster skeletons and used it to hit the fighting dogs. With a howl of pain, the dogs separated, and the Twolegs each grabbed one by the collar, continuing to jabber at each other.
“Is that what Twolegs are like?” Lightning Tail asked, shocked. “Why would any cat want to be a kittypet?”
“I don’t think all Twolegs are like this,” Thunderstar mewed uneasily. He hated those dogs, but he still couldn’t be glad to see them treated so cruelly.
The Twolegs began dragging the two dogs inside their dwelling, calling crossly to the other two, who followed. As the door closed behind them, Thunderstar’s heart began to pound faster. “They’re all inside. This is our chance to check things out.”
Signaling for Lightning Tail to follow, Thunderstar crept down the hill toward the Twoleg dwelling. He tried to keep a wary eye on both the door to the den and the dead monsters around it, but nothing stirred. The two cats halted by the fence of glittering silver strands that surrounded the whole Twolegplace.
Lightning Tail put out a tentative paw to touch one of the strands and immediately pulled it back. “Ouch,” he muttered. The silver was twisted into sharp knots at intervals. “How’re those dogs getting out? I couldn’t get through that, and they’re a lot bigger than I am.”
“Maybe the Twolegs let them out?” Thunderstar suggested, but Lightning Tail shook his head.
“I doubt it. Remember when dogs have come to the forest before?” he asked. “There are always Twolegs somewhere behind them, calling and whistling for them to come back. Why would these Twolegs let their dogs run free? They don’t seem like they want the dogs to be happy.”
“Yeah,” Thunderstar mewed thoughtfully. “I bet they’re supposed to patrol around here and guard the Twoleg den.”
The two cats began to walk alongside the silver strands, inspecting them carefully. They were far too high to jump. Dogs were good diggers, but the ground here was hard, and there was no sign of a tunnel.
They turned a corner, and Thunderstar spotted a bush growing close up beside the fence, long creepers climbing up and twining themselves among the silver strands. The strands were fully concealed behind the overgrown bush, so Thunderstar pushed his way through the branches for a closer look.
Low down, hidden by the bush, the silver strands were torn and hanging, leaving a hole big enough for even the largest of the dogs.
“Lightning Tail,” he called. “Over here.”
Thunderstar and Lightning Tail gazed at the opening. Now that they had found it, how could they prevent the dogs from coming through again?
“We can’t mend the strands,” Lightning Tail mewed at last. “What if we blocked the hole with something?”
“But what?” Thunderstar asked. He thought wildly of rolling a fallen tree across it to shut the dogs in, but they had no fallen tree and, if they had, he couldn’t imagine being able to move one with only the two of them.