Echosong dug her claws into the ground while her gaze traveled around the listening Clan. Leafstar realized she was angry that most of the Clan had heard the argument, and found herself struggling hard not to show it.
“We’ll discuss this later,” the medicine cat hissed. “I don’t want to hold up your hunting patrol.”
Leafstar felt close to despair as she watched Echosong stalk away. We were so close once.
As the patrol headed up the trail and into the woods, Frecklepaw lagged behind. “I wanted to stay and help Echosong,” she complained.
“Well, you can’t.” Ebonyclaw sounded cross and frustrated, and Leafstar couldn’t blame her. “You’re my apprentice, and you need to train.”
“I don’t want to have a stupid training session.”
Leafstar guessed that Frecklepaw hadn’t meant her mentor to hear her last muttered comment, but the black she-cat’s ears were sharp.
“I’m not too keen, either!” she snapped, giving her apprentice a sharp flick over the ear with her tail. “Now stop moaning and concentrate!”
Leafstar spotted Sharpclaw rolling his eyes. “Both of you need to concentrate,” he meowed. “Carry on like that, and you’ll scare away all the prey between here and the Twolegplace.”
Ebonyclaw lashed her tail but said nothing. Relieved that she didn’t have to step in to end the quarrel, Leafstar led the way deeper into the woodland, picking up the strong scent of squirrel.
It was Sharpclaw who spotted it first. “Over there,” he whispered, angling his ears to where the squirrel was crossing a clearing just ahead of them in a series of short bounces. “Aren’t we lucky?” He glanced sideways at Ebonyclaw. “There’s still some prey left. Maybe it’s deaf. Egg, do you think you can catch it?”
Egg’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll try.”
Frecklepaw gave her fur a bad-tempered shake. “He’s only just been made an apprentice!” she grumbled.
Egg dropped into a crouch and began to creep forward, using tufts of long grass as cover. But he had forgotten to check the wind direction; the breeze was blowing directly from him to the squirrel. Suddenly the creature sat upright, then raced for the nearest tree, its bushy tail waving in the air.
Letting out a screech of frustration, Egg erupted out of the grass. He hurtled across the clearing, cutting down the squirrel’s lead, but he was still several paw steps behind when it reached the tree and began to climb. With a massive SkyClan leap, Egg hurled himself up the tree behind it, and fastened his jaws in its tail before it could reach the safety of the branches. Egg and the squirrel fell to the ground together; the squirrel struggled frantically for a couple of heartbeats, then went limp.
Egg rose to his paws with his prey dangling in front of him. “Was that okay?” he panted through a mouthful of fur.
“Great catch!” Sharpclaw declared, padding over to him and giving the squirrel a sniff.
Leafstar noticed that Ebonyclaw was nodding in agreement, and Frecklepaw’s eyes were wide with awe, her ill temper forgotten.
“Well done,” Leafstar meowed as they padded over to join Egg at the foot of the tree. “But next time, remember to check the wind. If you’d worked your way around so your scent wasn’t carried to your prey, you wouldn’t have had to chase it like that.”
Egg’s eyes were still shining with triumph. “I’ll remember,” he promised, dropping the squirrel at Leafstar’s paws.
“When we’ve caught some prey we bury it,” Sharpclaw explained, scratching busily at the soft ground beneath the tree with his hind paws. “Then we come back and fetch it later, when we’ve caught enough to take back to camp.”
“I can see a pigeon!” Frecklepaw hissed in an excited whisper as Sharpclaw dropped the squirrel into the hole and began scraping earth back over it. “Can I try to catch it?”
Ebonyclaw nodded, and her apprentice slipped away into the undergrowth. Leafstar spotted the pigeon: a fine plump bird pecking among the roots of a nearby oak tree. Frecklepaw was carefully skirting the clearing to approach from the right direction; Leafstar guessed she was extra eager to make a catch of her own to prove she was just as good as Egg.
As Sharpclaw finished burying the squirrel and dropped a beech husk on the spot to mark it, Leafstar caught sight of Frecklepaw peering out of a clump of fern next to the oak tree. But something alerted the pigeon; it fluttered upward to land on a branch.
“Bad luck!” Ebonyclaw muttered.
But Frecklepaw hadn’t given up. She emerged from the ferns and bunched her muscles to take a leap into the tree, on the side away from the pigeon. Though Leafstar didn’t think she could possibly have startled the bird, it flew off into another tree before she could get close enough to pounce. Frecklepaw followed with a neat jump from the end of a branch onto a fork in the next tree.
“Come on.” Leafstar waved her tail to beckon her patrol. “Let’s see what happens.”
Frecklepaw was gradually drawing closer to the pigeon. Leafstar’s pelt prickled with excitement as she watched the apprentice’s agile progress through the branches. Ebonyclaw had taught her well. Even so, Leafstar wasn’t sure that Frecklepaw would be able to manage the kill on her own. The pigeon was large, and becoming more and more flustered as Frecklepaw drew closer. With every heartbeat Leafstar expected it to fly off.
“Spread out,” she whispered to the rest of the patrol. “Climb trees so that we’re surrounding the pigeon.”
Sharpclaw, Egg, and Ebonyclaw headed off in different directions. Leafstar chose the tree next to the one where the pigeon had finally settled on a branch. Frecklepaw was edging closer, prowling along another branch a tail-length higher.
Leafstar had just started to climb when a terrified yowl split the silence of the woods. “Watch out! Get away from there!”
The pigeon flew off, vanishing into a more distant clump of trees. “Mouse dung!” Frecklepaw exclaimed, staring after it indignantly.
Leafstar dropped to the ground again to see Egg hurtling across the forest floor, his voice still raised in a loud wail. He charged into Ebonyclaw as she braced herself to jump onto the trunk of a fallen tree, bundling her away from it. “There’s a fox! A fox!” he screeched.
“Get off me!” Ebonyclaw pushed Egg away and scrambled to her paws, spitting in fury.
Leafstar paused for a heartbeat to taste the air. She picked up the SkyClan border markings a few tail-lengths ahead, and sure enough, a strong scent of young fox.
“How did you know about that?” she asked Egg, padding over to where the new apprentice had crouched in the grass and was staring around fearfully.
Egg staggered to his paws, trying to force his bristling fur to lie flat. “My den is on the other side of that tree,” he explained. “At least, it was until the fox came.”
Leafstar nodded worriedly. “Thanks for warning us,” she meowed. “We don’t want a fox in our territory. We’ll have to organize a patrol to hunt it down, and chase it away if we have to.”
“No need,” Sharpclaw assured her, strolling over to her side. “The fox has gone now.”
“You knew about it?” Leafstar asked, baffled. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Sharpclaw shrugged. “There was no point. I knew the trail led away from our territory.”
“That’s not what you told me!” To Leafstar’s amazement, Egg pushed himself between her and her deputy, gazing at his mentor with troubled blue eyes. “You said that the fox had come to live here permanently, and I wouldn’t be safe if I stayed here on my own.”
A thorn of suspicion stabbed Leafstar. “When did he say this?” she asked Egg.
“A few days ago, when he came to find me to warn me about the fox,” Egg replied, looking confused. “He was right, wasn’t he? I mean, foxes won’t hurt me, now that I live with the Clan.”