We have to lure the one on the ground farther away, Gray Wing thought.
Hoping Bright Stream would understand, he gestured with his tail toward a nearby bush. Bright Stream nodded. “I’m ready.”
Together Gray Wing and Bright Stream sprang into the open, right in front of the eagle on the ground. Gray Wing heard it screech as it took off after them. Glancing over his shoulder he saw Clear Sky powering upward, leaping so high that he grabbed the neck of the eagle on the rock. It tried to take off, but Clear Sky’s weight was too much for it. The other three cats crowded after him and dragged the bird down to the top of the rock.
Transfixed by the sight, Gray Wing didn’t look where he was going. His flying paw struck something and he stumbled. Haredung! he hissed, spotting a gnarled tree root almost concealed by snow.
His pace faltered as a sharp pain sliced through his leg. He could sense the pursuing eagle swooping down on him and struggled to move faster. A heartbeat later Bright Stream’s pale tabby-and-white pelt reappeared in the dim light and he realized that she had swerved around to help him. Boosting him with her shoulder, she shoved him toward the bush, into a narrow gap beneath the thorny branches.
His vision blurred by terror, Gray Wing scrabbled to pull himself farther in and give Bright Stream space to follow. But when he turned, he saw her sliding backward, her claws digging uselessly into the ground.
What…? Pain made Gray Wing slow to realize what was happening. Then he saw that the eagle had caught hold of Bright Stream, its cruel talons sunk into her haunches. She shrieked as the bird lifted her off the ground.
“Gray Wing! Help me!”
Chapter 8
Ignoring the pain in his leg, Gray Wing scrambled out from under the bush and launched himself upward. But his outstretched claws only brushed Bright Stream’s tail as the eagle flapped out of reach, screeching in triumph.
“Fight back!” Gray Wing yowled to Bright Stream as he raced along the ground below. “Get free somehow!”
He spotted the two eagles who had chased Turtle Tail and Cloud Spots circling back to join their companion. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Clear Sky and the cats with him finishing off the fourth eagle with bites to its neck.
The other three eagles soared higher. Bright Stream’s cries faded as she was carried into the sky. Horror gave speed to Gray Wing’s paws as he followed, leaping from boulder to boulder, skidding on loose stones, flaying the skin off his pads.
“Gray Wing! Stop!” Dimly he heard Turtle Tail’s voice screeching after him.
Cloud Spots and Turtle Tail raced up to him, pacing him on either side. “You can’t help her now,” Cloud Spots panted.
With a shriek of loss and frustration Gray Wing skidded to a halt and found himself on the very edge of the cliff. A few more paw steps and he would have toppled down into the valley below.
“Bright Stream!” he gasped out, his flanks heaving as guilt and grief flooded through him. “It was my fault!”
Cloud Spots pressed himself against Gray Wing’s side. Turtle Tail’s voice shook as she tried to comfort him. “You did everything you could.”
Gray Wing hovered at the cliff edge, imagining himself crashing down below, his body shattered on the rocks. For a moment he swayed, his head spinning; then he felt Cloud Spots’s claws drag him back from the edge.
“Come on,” the black-and-white tom meowed. “We have to go back to the others.”
As Gray Wing turned away from the precipice, Clear Sky and Tall Shadow came running to meet them.
“We did it!” Clear Sky exclaimed triumphantly. “We killed the eagle!”
Even Tall Shadow, usually so reserved, was excited, her green eyes gleaming.
Jackdaw’s Cry came racing up behind them. He had a torn ear, but otherwise looked uninjured. “Those birds won’t trouble us again,” he declared with satisfaction.
Clear Sky halted, and gazed around, puzzled. “Where’s Bright Stream?” he asked.
Gray Wing opened his jaws to reply, but found no words, grief crashing over him again.
“I’m so sorry,” Turtle Tail mewed gently. “One of the eagles took her.”
Clear Sky stared at her, as still as a cat made of ice. “Impossible!” he rasped. “Bright Stream is too fast to be caught like that! Gray Wing,” he went on, turning on his brother, “why didn’t you help her?”
“I… hurt my leg,” Gray Wing stammered. “She was helping me escape, under a bush.”
Horror welled up in Clear Sky’s eyes. “You left her outside?”
Gray Wing shook his head helplessly. “It wasn’t like that…” he began to protest, then let his voice die away, because there was nothing he could say that would convince any cat, least of all himself, that he wasn’t responsible for Bright Stream’s death.
“Don’t,” Cloud Spots murmured, brushing one paw along Gray Wing’s flank. “It wasn’t any cat’s fault.”
“Right.” Clear Sky straightened and swung around, scanning the landscape. “Which way did the eagle go?”
While the rest of the cats stared at him, Gray Wing saw Shaded Moss approaching from the overhanging rock where they had sheltered. Tall Shadow ran back toward him, mewing urgently as she told him what had happened.
Approaching the group, Shaded Moss laid his tail on Clear Sky’s back. “We won’t be able to find Bright Stream now,” he meowed.
“We must!” Clear Sky protested, his voice full of love and pain. “She’s going to have my kits!”
Gasps of horror came from the assembled cats. Gray Wing felt more wretched than ever, remembering the tiny lives that had been destroyed with their mother.
Shaded Moss shook his head. “So much loss…” he murmured.
Keeping his tail across Clear Sky’s back, he coaxed him toward the overhang where the other cats were waiting. Turtle Tail ran ahead to break the news, while Cloud Spots padded alongside Gray Wing.
A grief-stricken silence greeted the cats as they slipped under the overhang again. Even Moon Shadow was too stunned for his usual chatter.
They gathered around Clear Sky, offering hushed words of comfort, but Gray Wing knew there was nothing any cat could say that would ease his brother’s pain. They couldn’t even reassure him that Bright Stream had died quickly and painlessly.
Gray Wing crept into a corner and lay down, resting his head on his paws. A moment later Turtle Tail settled down beside him, so close that her pelt brushed his.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.
But it was, Gray Wing thought in anguish. It absolutely was.
No cat got much sleep that night. As a gray, chilly dawn began to break, they crept out into the open. When Gray Wing emerged, Shaded Moss was dragging the body of the dead eagle across the snow toward them.
“We need to eat,” he announced, dropping the prey in the midst of the group. “We have to keep our strength up.”
Clear Sky was the last cat to appear, his eyes dark with grief. At first he turned away from the bird, but Tall Shadow nudged him closer, and eventually he crouched and choked down a few mouthfuls.
“Clear Sky,” Shaded Moss began when he had finished eating, “do you want to return to the cave?” The usually confident leader sounded uncertain. “Because Bright Stream died here, in the mountains, you might want to stay.”
Clear Sky hesitated, then shook his head. “I promised Bright Stream that there was a better place for us to live. I will keep my promise by finding it—for her sake, and our kits’.”