Stormfur gave Midnight an anxious look, wondering if the badger was offended by Purdy’s words. To his relief, she looked as amused as Squirrelpaw, her tiny black eyes gleaming.
“Come and meet Purdy,” Stormfur mewed to her. “He guided us through Twolegplace.”
Midnight plodded forward until she stood in front of the old tabby tom. Unconvinced, Purdy crouched down with his neck fur bristling and his lips drawn back in a snarl to reveal snaggly teeth. Stormfur felt a twinge of admiration for his courage, even though the badger could have flattened him with one swat of her powerful front paws.
“Here is not fight,” Midnight assured him. “Friend of my friends is my friend also. Much of you they have told me.”
Purdy’s ears twitched. “Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you,” he muttered. “But I suppose you must be all right if they say so.” Backing away, he turned to Brambleclaw. “Why are we hangin’ around here?” he demanded. “There are Upwalkers and dogs all over the place. Say good-bye and let’s be on our way.”
“Hang on!” Squirrelpaw protested loudly to Brambleclaw.
“You said we could hunt.”
“We can,” he mewed.
He paused to taste the air; Stormfur did the same, and was relieved to find that although he could distinguish several different dog scents, they were all stale. He guessed that Purdy was using the danger of dogs as an excuse to get away from Midnight.
“Okay,” Brambleclaw went on, “let’s split up and hunt quickly. We’ll meet in that place where we camped last time.
Tawnypelt, do you want to go straight there?”
The ShadowClan warrior’s eyes flashed as she replied, “No, I can hunt as well as any of you.”
Before any of the cats could respond, Midnight padded up to her and gave her a gentle nudge. “Foolish warrior,” she rumbled. “Rest while able. Show me camping place. I will stay while sun is high, go home in dark.”
Tawnypelt shrugged. “Okay, Midnight.” She headed farther into the woods, following the stream to the hollow where the cats had rested on the outward journey.
The air was cooler in the dappled shade of the trees.
Stormfur began to relax, feeling safer here than on the open moorland, though the chattering stream, too shallow for fish, was no substitute for the river he loved. A pang of loss stabbed through him at the thought that, even if he saw the river again, it would not be for long; Midnight had told them that the Clans would have to leave the forest as soon as the six cats returned.
A rustle in the undergrowth reminded him of how hungry he was. It would be good to go off for a while and hunt with Feathertail, just as they did at home. But when he swung around to speak to his sister, he saw that Crowpaw was saying something in her ear.
“Do you want to hunt with me?” the apprentice muttered, sounding half grudging, half embarrassed. “We’d do better together.”
“That would be great!” Feathertail’s eyes shone; then she spotted Stormfur, and looked even more embarrassed than the WindClan cat. “Er—why don’t we all hunt together?”
Crowpaw looked away, and Stormfur felt the hairs on his neck begin to prickle. What right did this apprentice have to invite Feathertail to be his hunting partner? “No, I’m fine on my own,” Stormfur retorted, spinning around and plunging into the undergrowth, trying to pretend he hadn’t seen the hurt in his sister’s blue eyes.
But once he slipped beneath the lowest branches of the bushes his irritation faded. His ears pricked up and all his senses were alert in the hunt for prey.
Before long he spotted a mouse scrabbling among fallen leaves, and dispatched it with one swift blow. Satisfied, he scraped earth over the little brown body until he was ready to collect it, and looked around for more. Soon he added a squirrel and another mouse to his hoard—which was as much as he could carry—and set off for the meeting place.
On the way he began to wonder how Feathertail was getting along, asking himself if he should have stayed with her after all. He was not one of StarClan’s chosen cats; he had come on this mission especially to look after his sister. He had been wrong to abandon her in this strange place, just because Crowpaw had annoyed him. What would he do if something happened to her?
When he reached the camping place he saw Tawnypelt stretched out in the shade of a hawthorn bush, her tortoiseshell fur hardly visible in the dappled sunlight. Midnight was beside her, dozing, and there was more chewed-up burdock root laid on Tawnypelt’s injured shoulder. The badger must have found some growing by the stream. Brambleclaw was perched above Tawnypelt on a steeply arching tree root, obviously keeping watch, while Feathertail and Crowpaw shared a squirrel just below. As Stormfur dropped his catch on the small pile of fresh-kill in the center of the hollow, Squirrelpaw appeared at the top of the slope, dragging a rabbit, and Purdy followed with a couple of mice in his jaws.
“Good, we’re all here,” meowed Brambleclaw. “Let’s eat and then get moving.”
He leaped down into the hollow and chose a starling from the pile. Stormfur took one of his mice over to Feathertail, settling down next to her on the opposite side from Crowpaw.
“Good hunting?” he asked.
Feathertail blinked at him. “Brilliant, thanks. There’s so much prey here! It’s a pity we can’t stay longer.”
Stormfur was tempted to agree, but he knew that the danger to their home was too desperate for them to delay. He began to devour his mouse in famished gulps, his paws already itching for the next stage of their journey.
He had swallowed the last of the fresh-kill and was beginning to groom his thick gray pelt when he heard a low snarling behind him. He saw Brambleclaw raise his head, alarm flaring in his yellow eyes.
Stormfur whipped around to see what had spooked the ThunderClan warrior. A familiar smell hit his scent glands a heartbeat before two slender, tawny shapes emerged from the bracken beside the stream.
Foxes!
Chapter 2
Leafpaw wrinkled her nose at the foul scent and tried not to hiss in disgust. Shaking her head, she parted Sorreltail’s tortoiseshell fur with one paw and dabbed the wad of bile-soaked moss on the tick clinging to her shoulder.
Sorreltail wriggled as she felt the bile soak through her fur.
“That’s better!” she meowed. “Has it gone yet?”
Leafpaw opened her mouth and dropped the twig that held the moss. “Give it time.”
“There’s only one good thing about ticks,” Sorreltail mewed.
“They hate mouse bile just as much as we do.” Springing to her paws, she gave herself a vigorous shake and flicked the tick off her shoulder. “There! Thanks, Leafpaw.”
A breeze rustled through the trees that surrounded the medicine cat’s den. A few leaves drifted down; there was a chill in the morning air that warned Leafpaw of how few moons there were before leaf-bare. This time there would be more than the cold and shortage of prey to face. Leafpaw closed her eyes and shuddered as she remembered what she had seen the day before on patrol with her father, Firestar.
The biggest monster the cats had ever seen had been forging a dreadful path through the forest, scoring deep ruts into the earth and tearing up trees by their roots. The huge, shiny monster had rolled inexorably through the bracken, roaring and belching smoke while the cats scattered helplessly before it. For the first time, Leafpaw began to understand the danger to the forest, which had been prophesied twice now, once in Brambleclaw’s dream that had sent him on the journey with Squirrelpaw, and once in Cinderpelt’s vision of fire and tiger. The doom that had been foretold was coming upon the forest, and Leafpaw did not know what any cat could do to stop it.