Warriors: Power Of Three 5 - Long Shadows (2 page)

Sandstorm dropped into the hunter’s crouch and glided over the forest f loor, pausing to waggle her haunches before the final pounce. The movement alerted the thrush; dropping the snail, it let out a loud alarm call and launched itself into the air.

But Sandstorm was too fast for it. With an enormous leap she clawed it out of the air in a flurry of wings; it went limp as she bit down hard on its neck.

“Brilliant catch!” Hazeltail mewed.

“Not bad,” Sandstorm purred, scratching earth over her prey until she could collect it later.

Hollyleaf picked up the scent of mouse and followed it along a bramble thicket until she spotted the little creature scuffling among the debris beneath the outer branches. A couple of heartbeats later she had her own prey to bury beside Sandstorm’s.

Brambleclaw was clawing earth over a vole; he gave her an approving nod. “Well done, Hollyleaf. Carry on like this and the Clan will soon be full-fed.” He stalked off into a hazel thicket, his jaws parted to pick up the faintest trace of prey.

For a few heartbeats Hollyleaf stood looking after her father, his praise warming her. Casting about for more prey, she picked up the trail of a squirrel, but as she rounded the trunk of a huge oak she spotted Hazeltail ahead of her, following the same scent. There was no sign of the squirrel, but the trail led straight toward the ShadowClan border. Hollyleaf could already make out the scent of the border markings, but Hazeltail seemed too preoccupied with her hunt to notice.

“Hey, Hazeltail, don’t—”

Hollyleaf broke off as three cats emerged from a clump of bracken on the other side of the border. Hazeltail was only a couple of tail-lengths away; startled, she halted, her ears flicking up in surprise.

Relief surged through Hollyleaf as she recognized the newcomers: Ivytail, Snaketail, and his apprentice, Scorchpaw.

All three of them had fought on ThunderClan’s side in the battle; Hollyleaf could still see gashes along Ivytail’s side, and Scorchpaw’s ear was torn. They surely wouldn’t be angry with Hazeltail for coming right up to the border.

“Hi,” she meowed as she bounded up to stand beside Hazeltail. “How’s the prey running in ShadowClan?”

“Keep back!” Ivytail spat. “You’ve no right to come into ShadowClan territory. Just because we helped you in the battle doesn’t make us allies.”

“Typical ThunderClan,” Snaketail added, his voice a low snarl. “Thinking every Clan is their friend.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Hollyleaf demanded, stung by their hostility.

No cat answered her question. Instead, Ivytail stalked up to the border until she was nose-to-nose with Hazeltail.

“What do you think you’re doing, this close to the border?”

“I was tracking a squirrel.” Hazeltail sounded bewildered.

“But⎯”

“Prey-stealing!” Snaketail interrupted, the fur on his shoulders fluffing up in anger and his striped tail lashing.

“We were not!” Hollyleaf mewed indignantly. “We’re still on ThunderClan territory, in case you hadn’t noticed. Hazeltail hasn’t crossed your border.”

“Only because we turned up in time to stop her,” Snaketail growled.

Rustling sounded from the undergrowth behind Hollyleaf; she whipped around to see Brambleclaw and Sandstorm approaching, with Birchfall just behind. “Thank StarClan!”

she murmured.

Brambleclaw padded forward until he stood beside Hollyleaf and Hazeltail. “Greetings,” he mewed, dipping his head to the three ShadowClan cats. “What’s going on here?”

“We had to stop these warriors of yours,” the ShadowClan cat explained. “Another couple of heartbeats and they would have crossed our border.”

“That’s not true!” Hollyleaf exclaimed hotly.

“I was tracking a squirrel.” Hazeltail faced the ThunderClan deputy with an apologetic look in her eyes. “I did forget where I was for a moment, but Hollyleaf warned me, and then the ShadowClan patrol appeared. I promise, I never set paw over the border.”

Brambleclaw nodded. “You’re as close to the border on your side as we are on ours,” he pointed out to the ShadowClan cats. “But no cat is accusing you of trying to cross.”

“We’re a border patrol!” Snaketail flashed back at him.

“And it’s just as well we came along when we did.”

“No cat can trust ThunderClan,” Scorchpaw added, padding up beside his mentor.

Birchfall let out a hiss of fury; thrusting his way through the long grass he halted beside the ThunderClan deputy.

“Brambleclaw, are you going to stand there and let an apprentice insult our Clan? When we haven’t even done anything?”

Sandstorm flicked his shoulder with her tail. “That’s enough, Birchfall. Let Brambleclaw handle this.”

The younger warrior let out a snort of disgust; he said nothing more, but stood glaring at the ShadowClan patrol.

“Birchfall’s right!” Hollyleaf protested. “These cats are just trying to make trouble. We haven’t broken the warrior code.”

“Oh, the precious warrior code!” Ivytail’s voice was full of scorn. “You think it’s the answer to everything, but you’re wrong. The warrior code didn’t stop the sun from vanishing, did it?”

“Right.” Snaketail supported his Clanmate. “Maybe it’s time the Clans stopped being so obsessed with dead cats, and started looking for other answers instead.”

Hollyleaf stared at them in dismay. She knew that these thoughts came from Sol. Was this what the strange cat had wanted all along—to destroy the warrior code from inside the Clans?

He meant to start with us. Hollyleaf remembered how friendly and helpful Sol had seemed. But maybe ShadowClan had been an easier prospect; Hollyleaf couldn’t imagine Firestar abandoning his beliefs as easily as Blackstar.

I have to save ShadowClan! In her desperation Hollyleaf was scarcely aware of the cats around her any longer. They can’t turn their backs on StarClan and the warrior code! There have to be four Clans!

“Hollyleaf, calm down,” Brambleclaw murmured beside her.

Hollyleaf realized that her pelt was fluffed out and her claws were digging into the damp earth. The three ShadowClan cats were staring at her, fur bristling as if they expected her to leap on them. Taking a deep breath she sheathed her claws and tried to make her fur lie flat again.

“I’m okay,” she muttered to her father.

“This is Sol talking, isn’t it?” Birchfall jeered, taking a pace forward so that he stood right on the border. “You’re all crazier than a fox in a fit! It’s mouse-brained to listen to a cat that no Clan cat has ever met before.”

“We listen because Sol talks sense,” Snaketail retorted, stepping forward until he faced Birchfall. “He knows what to do to give ShadowClan a better life for the future. Maybe if ThunderClan listened they would be able to fight their own battles. Maybe that’s why the sun vanished, to tell us that the time of the Clans is over, and cats have to work out how to live on their own. If ThunderClan is too cowardly to face that⎯”

With a screech of fury, Birchfall leaped on Snaketail.

The two cats rolled over in a spitting knot of fur. Scorchpaw jumped on top of them, clawing at Birchfall’s shoulder.

Hazeltail launched himself onto the apprentice, trying to thrust him away from Birchfall.

“Birchfall, Hazeltail, get back here now.” Sandstorm took a pace forward, only to find her way blocked by Ivytail.

“Can’t your young warriors fight their own battles?” the ShadowClan warrior sneered. “A battle they started?” She unsheathed her claws and drew back her lips in a snarl.

Brambleclaw bounded forward to stand at Sandstorm’s side. “No. This battle was provoked by ShadowClan.”

Another yowl split the air from the fighting cats. Hollyleaf cringed at the sound of ripping fur, as if the claws were raking her own pelt. “Stop!” she screeched. “What are you doing?”

To her surprise, the battling cats fell apart, panting. At once Brambleclaw stepped forward and thrust Birchfall and Hazeltail back across the border onto their own territory.

“There’s been enough fighting,” he meowed. “Come on, ThunderClan.” As they started to leave, he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the ShadowClan patrol. “You can believe what you want, so long as you stay on your own side of the border.”

“We weren’t the ones who crossed it in the first place,” Ivytail hissed.

Brambleclaw turned his back on her and bounded ahead to lead the patrol away.

“Are you okay?” Hollyleaf murmured to Hazeltail; her Clanmate was blundering through the woods, stumbling over branches and letting trailing brambles rake her pelt.

“I’m a little dizzy,” Hazeltail confessed. “I hit my head on a branch when I was trying to pull Scorchpaw off Birchfall.”

“Here, I’ll guide you.” Hollyleaf rested her tail on Hazeltail’s shoulder. “We’ll let Leafpool take a look at you when we get back to camp. Birchfall was lucky that you did help him,”

she added. “He would have got an even worse clawing without you.”

The young ThunderClan warrior was limping along with blood oozing from a gash on his shoulder. When the patrol paused by the bramble thicket to collect Sandstorm’s thrush and their other prey, he sat down and began to wash the wound with vigorous strokes of his tongue.

“Birchfall, you asked for that.” Brambleclaw paused in digging up his vole. “ShadowClan shouldn’t have accused us of trying to cross the border, but you put us in the wrong when you started the fight. Warriors should know how to control themselves.”

“Sorry,” Birchfall mumbled.

“So you should be.”

When the patrol set off again, Brambleclaw and Sandstorm remained grimly silent. Birchfall padded after them with his head down.

Hazeltail was beginning to recover. “Thanks, Hollyleaf,”

she mewed, shaking off her friend’s tail. “I can manage now.

Don’t you think Brambleclaw was hard on Birchfall?” she went on. “ShadowClan was asking for a fight.”

“That doesn’t mean we were right to give them one,” Hollyleaf replied absently. She was finding it hard to pay attention to anything. Horror gripped her like an extra pelt, thick enough to choke her. ShadowClan believed that Sol held the answers to a better future, but they were wrong.

He’ll destroy the Clans, she thought, terror freezing her limbs until she could barely set one paw in front of another. Somehow, we have to find a way to stop him.

Jaypaw slid into the nursery with a bunch of catmint clamped in his jaws. The sharp scent of the herbs didn’t disguise the warm, milky scent of the nursing queens, or the underlying sourness that made Jaypaw’s fur prickle uneasily.

Daisy’s sleepy voice greeted him. “Hi, Jaypaw.”

“Hi, Daisy,” Jaypaw mumbled around the mouthful of herbs. “Hey, Millie.”

Millie’s only reply was a cough. Jaypaw padded over to her, across the thick layer of moss and bracken that covered the nursery floor, and dropped the herbs beside her. “Leafpool sent you those.”

“Thanks, Jaypaw.” Millie’s voice was hoarse. “Will you take a look at Briarkit? Her pelt feels really hot.”

Jaypaw nuzzled among the kits, who were sleeping pressed up close to their mother’s belly, until he identified Briarkit by her scent. The little kit was restless, letting out faint mews in her sleep and shifting about in the moss as if she couldn’t get comfortable. Jaypaw sniffed her all over, catching a whiff of the same sour scent that came from Millie. Her pelt was hot, just as Millie said, and her nose was dry.

Briarkit might have caught her mother’s cough! he thought worriedly. Aloud he said, “I’ll get Leafpool to send her some borage leaves for the fever. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” I hope I sound more confident than I feel, he added to himself.

As he listened to Millie chewing up the catmint, Jaypaw wondered whether it would be better to move her and Briarkit out of the nursery, so that the infection wouldn’t spread any further. It would be easier to look after them in Leafpool’s den.

But then Millie wouldn’t be able to feed Blossomkit and Bumblekit.

He could sense sharp pangs of anxiety coming from Daisy, the fear that Rosekit and Toadkit would start coughing, too.

There was nothing Jaypaw could say to reassure her. His claws worked impatiently in the mossy bedding. If I’ve got the power of the stars in my paws, why can’t I cure a cough?

The nursery felt hot and stifling, cramped with all five kits and the two mothers in there. Jaypaw was eager to be out in the open again, but he needed to wait and see if the catmint had helped Millie at all.

He heard a scuffling from Daisy’s direction, and Toadkit’s voice. “I’m a WindClan warrior, and I’m coming to get you!”

“I’ll get you first!” Rosekit mewed back.

The two kits started to wrestle; one flailing paw hit Jaypaw on the shoulder.

“That’s enough!” Daisy scolded. “If you want to play, go outside.”

The two kits bundled past Jaypaw and he heard their excited mews dying away as they dashed out into the clearing.

The long-furred she-cat sighed. “Sometimes I can’t wait for them to be apprenticed.”

“It won’t be long now,” Jaypaw meowed. “They’re strong kits.”

Daisy sighed again; Jaypaw could still sense that she was worrying, but she didn’t try to put her fears into words.

“My throat feels better now,” Millie announced, swallowing the last of the herbs. “Thanks, Jaypaw.”

Another loud bout of coughing interrupted her. Jaypaw flinched as a ball of sticky spit caught him on the ear. “I’ll go and talk to Leafpool,” he mewed hurriedly, backing toward the entrance to the den.

On his way out he clawed up a pawful of moss and rolled over on it to clean his ear. I wonder what happens if a medicine cat gets sick. Who looks after the Clan then? Shrugging, he headed across the clearing toward the den he shared with Leafpool.

As he brushed past the bramble screen, Jaypaw picked up the scents of other cats as well as Leafpool; sniffing, he distin-guished Birchfall and Hazeltail. There was a tang of blood in the air.

“Who’s hurt?” he demanded, his neck fur rising at the thought of another battle.

“Birchfall has a wounded shoulder,” Leafpool explained.

“Picking a fight with ShadowClan cats, by the sound of it.”

“They picked a fight with us,” Birchfall protested.