“That’ll teach you,” she meowed with satisfaction. To the cats she added, “Quick, follow me!”
They raced after her to the entrance of a Twoleg nest. Brambleclaw skidded to a halt.
“We can’t go in there!” he protested. “It’s a Twoleg nest.”
“Fine!” the tabby snapped. “Stay out here and get eaten.” She squeezed through the skinny gap at the side of the flat piece of wood blocking the opening and disappeared.
Brambleclaw and the rest of the patrol exchanged confused glances; then the deputy shrugged and raised his tail, signaling his Clanmates to follow. Lionblaze paused to look back across the grass, and saw that the small dog was still scrabbling at the gap. It had managed to get its shoulders and one paw through the hole.
Lionblaze felt his fur bristle and grow hot again as he braced himself to fight. He could almost taste the blood and hear the terrified yelping as his claws ripped into his enemies’ pelts.
Then he heard a crash and a Twoleg shouting; it sounded much closer than before. The dogs’ fierce barking turned to frightened yelps; the little dog struggled backward to free itself from the hole in the fence, then vanished.
Lionblaze’s fur lay flat again as the noise died away. He started to feel disappointed that he hadn’t managed to try out his battle skills against the dogs, then jumped as Brackenfur nudged him.
“Come on,” mewed the ginger tom, angling his ears toward the entrance to the nest. “What are you waiting for?”
The other cats had already gone inside. Lionblaze pushed his way through the gap, with Brackenfur close behind him. He found himself in a small, straight-sided den; his Clanmates huddled together in the middle, casting nervous glances around them. He tasted the air: There was a strong scent of cat, but only a very faint, stale trace of Twoleg.
“That’s unusual,” he began. “Why…?”
The brown tabby she-cat paid no attention to him. “This way,” she mewed briskly. “Since you’re here, you may as well meet the others.”
She led the way through an archway into a larger den. Light streamed into it from a long slit in the wall. As Lionblaze padded hesitantly forward, the smell of cats grew overpoweringly strong; it was almost like coming back into the camp after a patrol in the forest. Hollyleaf kept close to him, their pelts brushing, while Brambleclaw and Brackenfur stayed on the outside of the group. Lionblaze knew they were ready to protect the younger cats if they needed to. And so am I. If we have to fight our way out, I’m ready.
Brambleclaw signaled for his patrol to halt in the center of the den. A broad-shouldered gray tom sat on a shallow ledge just below the gap in the wall, while a she-cat with a flecked brown pelt was curled up on something like a soft boulder in bright Twoleg colors. Four kits suckled at her belly. On the other side of the den, another cat was barely visible as he peered out from underneath some wooden Twoleg thing.
Lionblaze caught his breath as he recognized the black-and-white tom sitting on top of another soft-looking boulder. He was the cat they had met the night before, who had run away from them.
“I’m Jingo,” the tabby she-cat announced, before Lionblaze could speak. “Over there is Hussar”—she waved her tail at the gray tom sitting on the ledge—“and the queen with kits is Speckle.”
“Hi, there,” Hussar meowed, with a lazy wave of his tail. Speckle just twitched her ears; she looked wary, as if she was afraid the newcomers might harm her kits.
“Over there’s Pod,” the tabby she-cat went on. The cat underneath the wooden structure blinked at them. “Come out, Pod, no cat is going to hurt you. And I think you’ve already met Fritz.”
As she finished speaking, she leaped up onto the squashy boulder beside the black-and-white tom. He stared at the Clan cats, wide-eyed, and didn’t speak.
Brambleclaw stepped forward. “Who did you think we were?” he asked Fritz. When the tom didn’t reply, he turned to Jingo. “When we met him last night he seemed to think we were connected with another cat, one who talked to you but ended up causing you trouble. Do you know who that was?”
“We don’t trust strangers around here anymore.” Jingo’s voice was solemn. “Not since Sol.”
Lionblaze felt a jolt in his belly. We were right! Sol has been here!
“Sol?” Brackenfur’s neck fur rippled. “You know him, then?”
Jingo nodded. “He came here last leaf-bare, but no cat knows where from. He lived on the edge of Twolegplace for a while, then when the weather turned colder he moved into this abandoned Twoleg nest and invited some other cats without housefolk to join him.”
“I was one of the first.” Pod emerged from underneath the wooden thing, revealing himself to be a scrawny brown tom, his muzzle gray with age. “Speckle and Fritz came with me.”
“And I joined later, with Hussar,” Jingo went on. “I heard about the community of cats that had made a home for themselves, and it sounded like a good idea.”
“Did Sol act like he was your leader?” Lionblaze asked. The patch-pelted loner had tried to take over ShadowClan; maybe that wasn’t the first time he’d been in control of a group of cats.
“Yes, did he ever tell you to believe anything in particular?” Hollyleaf added.
Jingo looked puzzled. “Not exactly. Only that we could live however we wanted to, because that’s what we deserved. Life was good, he said….”
“Life was not good!” Pod snapped. He sat down and lifted a hind leg to scratch behind his ear. “We had to do whatever Sol told us to, like bring him food and feathers for his nest. And he scared the little cats by telling them that they’d die without him.”
“It wasn’t that bad!” Jingo protested. “You’re just thinking of what happened later.”
“And why wouldn’t I?” Pod stopped scratching to glare at her. “That mouse-brained idiot nearly got us all killed!”
Fritz nodded vigorously, giving his whiskers a nervous twitch, but still didn’t speak.
Lionblaze glanced at Hollyleaf; she looked as shocked as he felt, her eyes glittering and her claws working on the hard Twoleg floor. When Sol had lived in the forest, he never wanted cats to die, Lionblaze thought. Is Hollyleaf wondering if he really could have killed Ashfur?
He was distracted by Speckle’s four kits, who left their mother and scrambled down, one after another, from the soft boulder. Speckle sat up, watching nervously as the biggest of the four, a tom with a flecked brown pelt like his mother, bounced up to Brambleclaw.
“I’m Frisk,” he announced. “What’s your name? Are you coming to live here?”
Brambleclaw shook his head. “We’re just passing through. I’m Brambleclaw,” he added, addressing all the cats. He went on to introduce the rest of the patrol. “Thanks for helping us,” he finished, dipping his head to Jingo. “The dogs would have ripped us to pieces without you.”
“We’d help any cat in danger from those dogs,” Jingo responded. “And you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Thank you.” Brambleclaw bowed again. “Now, can you tell us what Sol did?”
Jingo settled herself on the soft boulder, tucking her paws underneath her chest. Hussar sprang down lightly from the ledge and padded over to sit beside Pod. For the first time, Lionblaze noticed that he had a long scar along his side, where the fur hadn’t grown back. Glancing around, he noticed that the others had signs of injury, too: One of Fritz’s ears was torn, Pod’s muzzle was scarred, and the tip of Jingo’s tail was missing.
“These cats have been fighting hard,” he muttered to Hollyleaf.
He sat down on the hard Twoleg floor, longing for the grass of the forest or the soft moss of his nest in the warriors’ den. Hollyleaf sat beside him, her claws still flexing restlessly, and their Clanmates gathered around.