With a yowl of rage, Leafstar launched herself down the heap, her paws barely touching the side. With one swipe of her paw she tore the rat’s throat open and it sagged to the ground, releasing its grip on Rockshade.
Leafstar flinched as blood came welling out of the wound she had made. This is wrong; we should kill only to eat. But she knew too well that if she and her Clan didn’t succeed in wiping out the rats, they would become prey themselves.
“Thanks!” Rockshade grunted, whirling to block another rat as it fled from the heap toward the safety of the trees.
Leafstar reared up on her hind paws as she felt tiny claws fastening in her back fur. The rat fell off and scrambled away, squealing in terror, only to run straight into Sparrowpelt’s paws.
A huge female rat crashed into Leafstar’s haunches, with Shorty hard on its tail. The two cats battled side by side; still reluctant to kill, Leafstar found herself sheathing her claws as she gave the rat a blow on the side of the head.
“No!” a furious voice yowled from behind her.
Glancing back, Leafstar saw Sharpclaw; her deputy’s dark ginger fur was soaked with blood, and there was a wild light in his eyes.
“Show no mercy!” he snarled. “Kill or be killed!”
He’s right, Leafstar thought. Her claws slid out again, and she snatched at the she-rat’s throat, while Shorty bit down on its neck from the other side. The rat squeaked and died, while Leafstar shared a brief glance of satisfaction with the Twolegplace cat.
The battle surged around her in a wave of fur and teeth. She winced with disgust as her paws slipped on blood-soaked grass. The air was filled with the reek of blood and the shrieking of cats and rats. Leafstar leaped and twisted and struck out instinctively, fighting to escape from her nightmare of glittering eyes and sharp fangs. She wasn’t aware of her Clanmates any longer, only the wiry brown bodies that fell beneath her claws.
The rat under her paws stopped struggling. Leafstar spun around to face the next enemy and saw Cora standing in front of her. The Twolegplace cat’s ear was ripped and there were toothmarks along her jaw; she stood still, her chest heaving. Beyond her, more cats were standing like islands in a lake of dead rats.
“It’s over,” Cora panted.
“No more rats.” Sharpclaw made his way to Leafstar’s side, his paws shoving aside rat bodies as he approached.
Leafstar looked around. Heaps of dead rats lay around her, and blood-smeared trails through the bracken and long grass at the edge of the clearing showed where a few of the rats had dragged themselves into the trees to die. The waste heap was torn apart into smaller piles, with separate bits of debris scattered all over the clearing.
The rats won’t be able to use that as a refuge anymore.
The shrieking had given way to heavy silence, broken only by the wheezing breath of Waspwhisker, who lay on his side a few fox-lengths away. Mintpaw was heading toward him, scrambling over the bodies of rats to reach her mentor’s side.
“He’s hurt!” she wailed.
Leafstar picked her way through the dead rats to reach her injured Clanmate. Waspwhisker was bleeding from a deep scratch down his flank; the wound stretched under his belly almost to his tail.
The gray-and-white tom lifted his head and blinked pain-filled eyes. “I’m fine,” he rasped. “Just give me a couple of heartbeats to rest.”
“You need more than that,” Leafstar meowed, dipping her head to give Waspwhisker’s ear a lick. “We’ll help you back to camp and let Echosong take a look at you.”
“I finished off the rat that did it,” Waspwhisker murmured, lying down again and closing his eyes.
The rest of the cats gathered around him. All of them had some sort of injury—scratches, torn claws, nicked ears—though none as bad as Waspwhisker’s or Cora’s. Leafstar felt the sting of a scratch on her shoulder; she had never even noticed the rat who gave it to her.
“We won,” she announced.
None of the cats responded; Leafstar met Sharpclaw’s gaze, both cats acknowledging silently that this was not the time for celebration.
“Let’s go back to camp,” she meowed.
Chapter 11
“Waspwhisker, lie down here in the sun,” Echosong directed. “You too, Cora. The rest of you, go and wash yourselves in the pool below the Rockpile. Come back here when you’re clean.”
By the time the Clan returned to camp the sun was peering up over the top of the rocks, though patches of deep shade still lay in the bottom of the gorge. Leafstar and Cherrytail had helped Waspwhisker down the trail to the medicine cat’s den; though the warrior kept insisting he was fine, he was exhausted by the time he collapsed in the patch of warmth just outside Echosong’s cave.
Cora sat beside him and started licking his pelt to clear up the blood around the wound.
“Wash ourselves?” Patchfoot echoed disbelievingly as Echosong gave her last order. “In the pool?”
Murmurs of protest came from the cats behind him.
“I don’t like getting into water,” Petalnose complained. “Can’t I just lick myself clean?”
“And it’s dangerous,” Shrewtooth added, casting a nervous glance to where the water surged into the pool from beneath the rocks. “Some cat might drown.”
“I can’t believe you expect us to get wet all over,” Sparrowpelt grumbled.
“But that’s what I said.” Confronted with so many injuries, Echosong was trying to work efficiently, but Leafstar could hear a slight edge to her voice as she faced the protesting warriors. “I can’t treat a wound if I can’t see it, and you need to get rid of the stench of rat.”
Sharpclaw flicked his ears irritably. “Come on. We’d better get on with it.”
He led the way toward the pool and slowly lowered himself into the water, looking as if it felt worse than a rat bite. Reluctantly, the rest of the cats followed him.
Sagepaw limped out of Echosong’s den, halting with a squeak of dismay at the sight of so many injuries. “You’re all hurt!” he mewed, his eyes stretching wide.
“Yes, but you should have seen the rats,” his littermate, Mintpaw, replied with grim satisfaction. “They won’t bother us anymore.”
More agitated squeaking filled the air as Fallowfern’s kits tumbled down the trail, followed by their mother and Clovertail.
“Come back!” Fallowfern called, as the kits pelted toward Waspwhisker. “Don’t get in Echosong’s way.”
The kits ignored her, climbing all over their father, who by now was barely conscious. He gave a grunt of pain, and Cora tried to thrust the kits back with one paw. “Don’t do that,” she told them. “You’re hurting him.”
“But we want to help!” Nettlekit protested.
Leafstar was heading over to intervene, when she spotted Shorty returning from the pool, shaking water from his pelt. He snaked his tail over Waspwhisker’s back and gathered in the four kits. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you all about the battle,” he promised.
Instantly the kits bounced off their father and crowded around him.
“Did you kill lots of rats?”
“Was there lots of blood?”
“Will you show us your battle moves?”
Fallowfern padded up with concern in her blue eyes. “Be careful; you might frighten them,” she murmured to Shorty.
The Twolegplace cat touched her shoulder reassuringly with the tip of his tail. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them anything too scary.”
Fallowfern gazed after Shorty as he herded the kits toward a flat rock near the water’s edge, then followed Clovertail, who was speaking to Echosong.