MOONRISE

“Mouse dung!” Blackstar snarled. “Don’t try to tell me what to do, Firestar. I’m not one of your warriors. If you have anything to say, you should do what we have always done, and bring it to the next Gathering at Fourtrees.”

Part of Leafpaw felt that the ShadowClan leader was right. The warrior code dictated that the business of the forest should be discussed at Gatherings. There was nowhere else that cats could meet under the sacred truce of StarClan. At the same time, she knew that the Twolegs wouldn’t wait until after the next full moon to continue their destruction of the forest. What else might happen by the time of the next Gathering?

“Very well, Blackstar.” Firestar’s voice was hollow with defeat. It’s happening, Leafpaw thought in panic. He’s giving up. The forest is going to be destroyed. “If that’s the way you want it. But if the Twolegs come back, you have my permission to send a messenger into ThunderClan territory, and we will talk again.”

“Generous as always, Firestar.” Blackstar meowed scornfully. “But nothing’s going to happen that we can’t handle ourselves.”

“Mouse-brain!” Greystripe hissed.

Firestar shot Greystripe a warning glance, but the ShadowClan leader did not reply. Instead, he swept his tail towards Russetfur.

“Take some warriors and escort these cats off our territory,” he ordered. “And in case you were thinking of paying us another uninvited visit,” he added to Firestar, “we’ll be increasing our patrols along that border. Now go.”

There was nothing to do but obey. Firestar turned and signalled to his own cats to follow him. Russetfur and her warriors gathered around them in a threatening semicircle, letting them walk away but keeping them bunched tightly together. Leafpaw was glad when the tunnel under the Thunderpath came into sight, and more relieved still to be through it and heading for their own part of the forest.

“And don’t come back!” Russetfur spat as they crossed the border.

“We won’t!” Greystripe hurled a parting shot over his shoulder. “We were only trying to help, you stupid furball.”

“Leave it, Greystripe.” Now that they were back in their own territory, Firestar let his disappointment show. Leafpaw felt a sharp stab of compassion for him; it wasn’t his fault that ShadowClan had refused to listen to reason.

“Maybe we should try talking to WindClan?” she suggested quietly to Cinderpelt as the patrol headed for camp. “Perhaps they’ve had trouble too. That could be why they’ve been stealing fish from RiverClan.” She was referring to the furious accusations made by Hawkfrost, a RiverClan warrior, at the last Gathering.

“If they have. It was never proved,” Cinderpelt reminded her. “All the same, Leafpaw, you might have a point. Ravenpaw said there were more Twolegs than usual on that part of the Thunderpath.”

“Then perhaps Firestar should talk to Tallstar?”

“I don’t think Firestar will be talking to any more Clan leaders for a while,” Cinderpelt meowed, with a sympathetic glance at the flame-coloured tom. “Besides, Tallstar is a proud leader. He’d never admit that his Clan is starving.”

“But Firestar has to do something!”

“Perhaps Blackstar was right, and he should wait for the Gathering. But if I get the chance”—Cinderpelt interrupted her apprentice’s protest—“I’ll have a word with him.” She lifted her blue gaze to the cloud-covered sky. “And let’s just pray that StarClan has mercy on us, whatever happens.”

“Sorreltail, are you there?”

Leafpaw stood outside the warriors’ den and tried to peer through the branches. It was early the following morning; a thick fog covered the camp and misted her fur with tiny droplets of water.

“Sorreltail?” she repeated.

There was a scuffling sound inside the den, and Sorreltail poked her head out, blinking sleep from her eyes.

“Leafpaw?” Her jaws gaped wide in a yawn. “What’s the matter? The sun’s not up yet. I was having this terrific dream about a mouse . . .”

“Sorry,” Leafpaw mewed. “But I want you to do something with me. Are you due to go out with the dawn patrol?”

“No.” Sorreltail squeezed out between the branches and gave the fur on her shoulders a quick lick. “What’s all this about?”

Leafpaw took a deep breath. “I want to go and visit WindClan. Will you come with me?”

Sorreltail’s eyes stretched wide, and her tail curled up in surprise. “What if we meet a WindClan patrol?”

“It should be OK—I’m a medicine cat apprentice, so I’m allowed to go into the territories between here and Highstones. Please, Sorreltail! I really need to know whether WindClan is having trouble too.” Though she couldn’t tell Sorreltail, Leafpaw knew that a cat from every Clan had been chosen by StarClan for the journey. Because of that, she suspected that every Clan would be invaded by the Twolegs, but she wanted to be sure.

The light of adventure was already sparkling in Sorreltail’s eyes. “I’m up for it,” she declared. “Let’s get a move on, before any cat catches us and starts asking questions.”

She darted across the clearing and into the gorse tunnel. Leafpaw followed, with a last glance back at the silent, sleeping camp. The fog hung thickly in the ravine, deadening the sound of their pawsteps. Everything was grey, and though the dawn light was strengthening, there was no sign of the sun. The bracken was bent double with the weight of water drops, and soon the two cats’ pelts were soaked.

Sorreltail shivered. “Why did I ever leave my warm nest?” she complained, only half joking. “Still, if it’s like this on the moor, the fog will help to hide us.”

“And muffle our scent,” Leafpaw agreed.

But before she and Sorreltail reached Fourtrees, the mist had begun to thin out. It still lay heavy on the stream, but when they climbed the opposite bank they broke out into sunlight. Leafpaw shook the moisture from her fur, but there was little heat in the sun’s rays; she looked forward to a good run across the moor to warm herself up.

As they skirted the top of the hollow at Fourtrees, Leafpaw felt a breeze blowing directly off the moorland. She and Sorreltail paused for a moment at the far side of the hollow, their fur blown back and their jaws parted to scent the air.

“WindClan,” Sorreltail meowed. She put her head to one side, uncertainly. “There’s something odd about it, though.”

“Yes. And there’s no sign of any rabbits,” Leafpaw added.

She hesitated for a couple more heartbeats, then led the way across the border. The two cats darted from one clump of gorse to the next, making what use they could of the scant cover on the moorland. Leafpaw’s fur prickled; her tabby-and-white pelt would show up starkly against the short grass. In the ThunderClan camp she had been confident that as a medicine cat she would not be challenged; now she felt small and vulnerable. She wanted to find out what she could, then hurry back to the safety of her own territory.

She headed for the crest of a low hill that looked down over the Thunderpath, and flattened herself in the grass to peer down. Beside her, Sorreltail let out a long hiss.

“Well, there’s not much doubt about that,” she mewed.

Leading from the Thunderpath on the far side of the territory was a long scar where the moorland grass had been torn away. The track was marked by short stakes of wood like the ones Leafpaw had seen in ShadowClan territory the day before. It gouged a path across the moor and came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the hill where she and Sorreltail were crouching. A glittering monster sat silent where it ended. Leafpaw’s breath came in short gasps as she imagined it scanning the moorland, ready to leap on its prey with a roar.

“Where are its Twolegs?” Sorreltail muttered.

Leafpaw glanced from side to side, but everything was quiet; an air of menace lay thick as fog on the scarred landscape. There was still no scent of rabbits—had they been frightened away, Leafpaw wondered, or had the Twolegs taken them? Perhaps they had moved to a different part of the moor when the monster dug up their burrows.

“Yuck!” Sorreltail exclaimed suddenly. “Can you smell that?”

As she spoke, Leafpaw picked it up too, a harsh tang like nothing she had ever scented before. Instinctively her stomach churned and she curled her lip. “What is it?”

“Probably something to do with the Twolegs,” Sorreltail meowed disgustedly.

A distant yowl interrupted her. Leafpaw sprang to her paws and spun around to see three WindClan warriors racing towards them.

“Uh-oh,” murmured Sorreltail.

Before Leafpaw could decide whether to run or stay to talk, the WindClan cats had surrounded them. With a sinking heart she recognised the aggressive deputy Mudclaw, with the tabby warrior Tornear and another tabby tom she did not know. She would rather have dealt with the Clan leader, Tallstar, or Firestar’s friend Onewhisker, who were both more likely to listen to her explanations.

“Why are you trespassing on our territory?” the WindClan deputy demanded.

“I’m a medicine cat apprentice,” Leafpaw pointed out, bowing her head respectfully. “I came to—”

“To spy!” That was Tornear, his eyes blazing with anger. “Don’t think we don’t know what you’re up to!”

Now that the WindClan cats were up close, Leafpaw could see how thin they were. Their bristling pelts hardly covered their ribs. Fear-scent came off them in waves, almost drowning the scent of their fury. They were obviously short of food, but that didn’t explain why they were so much more hostile than ShadowClan had been.

“I’m sorry, we were only—” she began.

Mudclaw interrupted with a frenzied shriek. “Attack!”

Tornear hurled himself at Leafpaw. The ThunderClan cats were outnumbered and outclassed; besides, she and Sorreltail had not come to fight.

“Run!” Leafpaw yowled.

She leaped back from Tornear’s outstretched claws. Spinning round, she fled for the border, her belly close to the ground and her tail streaming out behind her. Sorreltail raced along at her side. Leafpaw dared not look over her shoulder, but she could hear the shrieks of the pursuing cats hard on their paws.

The border was in sight, but she barely had time to realise that they were bearing too far towards the river when scent markers flooded over her, WindClan and RiverClan scents mixed together.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “We’re in RiverClan territory now.”

“Keep going,” Sorreltail panted. “It’s only a narrow strip between here and ThunderClan territory.”

Leafpaw risked a glance to see if the WindClan patrol was still pursuing them. They were—they must be so furious that they hadn’t noticed the border, or did not care.

“They’re gaining on us!” she gasped. “We’ll have to fight. We can’t lead them on to our territory.”

She and Sorreltail whirled to face their attackers. Leafpaw braced herself, wishing desperately that she had never thought of entering WindClan territory, and especially that she had not brought Sorreltail into danger with her.

As Mudclaw leaped at her, Leafpaw saw a streak of golden fur shoot out from a nearby bush. It was Mothwing, the medicine cat apprentice from RiverClan. Then Mudclaw’s body crashed against her and she was rolling on the ground, squirming to escape the flurry of raking claws. She tried to twist round and sink her teeth into his neck, but there was a wiry strength in the deputy’s lean body that trapped her helplessly like a piece of prey. Leafpaw felt his claws rake across her side and bury themselves in her shoulder. With a massive effort she shook him off, trying to bring her hind paws up to attack his belly.

Suddenly the weight lifted and Mudclaw was scrabbling for a foothold beside her. Leafpaw staggered to her paws to see Mothwing cuffing him hard over both ears. “Get off our territory!” she spat. “And take your mangy friends with you.”

Mudclaw aimed a final blow at her, but he was already backing away. Sorreltail sprang up from where she had Tornear pinned down and bit hard on his tail before releasing him. He fled, yowling after the Clan deputy; the other tabby warrior had already vanished.

Mothwing turned back to the ThunderClan cats. Her golden tabby fur was hardly ruffled and her amber eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Having trouble?” she murmured.

Leafpaw fought for breath and shook leaves and scraps of twig from her pelt. “Thanks, Mothwing,” she replied. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you.” Turning to her friend, she added, “Sorreltail, have you met Mothwing? She’s Mudfur’s apprentice, but she was trained as a warrior first.”

“A good thing she was,” Sorreltail mewed, with a nod of thanks to the RiverClan cat. “We bit off more than we could chew there.”

“I’m sorry we’re on your territory,” Leafpaw went on. “We’ll go right away.”

“Oh, there’s no hurry.” Mothwing did not try to question them about why they were there, or what they had done to annoy WindClan. “You look pretty shaken. Rest for a bit and I’ll find you some herbs to calm you down.”

She vanished among the bushes, leaving Leafpaw and Sorreltail with nothing to do but sit and wait for her.

“Is she always this careless about the warrior code?” Sorreltail muttered. “She doesn’t seem to understand that we shouldn’t be here!”

“I think it’s because I’m a medicine cat apprentice too.”

“Even medicine cats have to stick to the warrior code,” mewed Sorreltail. “And I can’t see Cinderpelt being so welcoming to other Clans! Of course, Mothwing’s mother was a rogue, wasn’t she? That could explain it.”

“Mothwing is a loyal RiverClan cat!” Leafpaw fired up in defence of her friend. “It doesn’t matter who her mother was.”

“I never said it did,” Sorreltail soothed her, touching Leafpaw’s shoulder with her tail-tip. “But that might be why she’s more relaxed about Clan boundaries.”

Mothwing returned at that moment with a wad of herbs in her jaws. The ThunderClan apprentice drank in the scent of thyme; she remembered Cinderpelt telling her how good it was for calming anxieties.

“There,” Mothwing meowed. “Eat some of that and you’ll soon feel better.”

Leafpaw and Sorreltail crouched down and chewed up some of the leaves. Leafpaw imagined the juices soaking into every scrap of her body, healing the shock of their terrifying encounter with WindClan.

“Are you hurt at all?” Mothwing asked. “I can fetch some cobwebs.”

“No, there’s no need, thanks,” Leafpaw assured her. She and Sorreltail both had a few scratches, but they would stop bleeding by themselves without need for a poultice of cobwebs. “We really ought to be going.”

“So what was all that about?” Mothwing queried, as Leafpaw and Sorreltail swallowed the last of the herbs. She wasn’t quite as uninterested as the ThunderClan cats had thought. “What were you doing on WindClan territory?”

“We went to see what the Twolegs are up to,” Leafpaw explained. When Mothwing still looked mystified, she described how she had seen the monster roaring into the forest two days before, tearing up the ground, and then found evidence that WindClan and ShadowClan were being destroyed in the same way. She was aware of a doubtful glance from Sorreltail; the young warrior was clearly unhappy about revealing ThunderClan’s problems to a cat from a rival Clan. Leafpaw shook her head impatiently; there could be no harm in taking another medicine cat into her confidence.

“Firestar wants to ask the other Clans what they think,” she finished. “But ShadowClan won’t admit anything is wrong, and—well, you’ve seen how WindClan reacted.”

“What can you expect?” Sorreltail broke in. She passed her tongue over her lips as if she didn’t much like the taste of the herbs. “No Clan is going to be in a hurry to tell us they’re starving and losing their territory to Twolegs.”

“We’ve seen nothing of these monsters in RiverClan,” Mothwing meowed. “Everything’s fine here. But it explains one thing . . .” Her amber eyes widened. “I’ve sensed panic over WindClan territory. Their scent markers on the border are filled with fear.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sorreltail mewed. “They’re thin as anything, and there’s no scent of rabbits anywhere.”

“Everything’s changing,” Leafpaw murmured.

“And inside the Clans, as well. An ambitious cat might take the chance of—” Mothwing spoke quickly, urgently, and then broke off awkwardly.

“What do you mean?” Leafpaw prompted.

“Oh . . . no . . . I don’t know.” Mothwing trailed off and looked away.

Leafpaw stared at her, wondering what was going on inside that beautiful golden head. She was too young to remember Tigerstar, the bloodthirsty cat who had plotted to make himself leader of ThunderClan. When his murderous plans failed, he had been prepared to destroy the whole Clan for vengeance. She shivered. Did Mothwing know of another cat with ambition like this? Surely the forest could never produce another Tigerstar?

Her thoughts were interrupted when Mothwing sprang to her paws, her head turned towards the river. “A patrol is coming!” she exclaimed. “Come this way—quickly!”

She slipped between two bushes; Leafpaw and Sorreltail followed. A few moments later they came into the open and found themselves on the slope that led up to the ThunderClan border.

“If your Clan is short of prey, come and see me,” Mothwing mewed. “We can always spare a few fish. Now run!”

Leafpaw and Sorreltail streaked up the slope and plunged for cover into more bushes. Though Leafpaw braced herself for accusing snarls behind her, they reached the border unseen.

“Thank StarClan for that!” Sorreltail exclaimed as they crossed into their own territory.

Leafpaw looked back through the branches. Mothwing was standing where they had left her; a moment later the undergrowth parted and a large, sleek-furred tabby warrior emerged. Leafpaw recognised Mothwing’s brother Hawkfrost; two other warriors followed him. Hawkfrost stopped to talk to his sister, but never once glanced in the direction of the ThunderClan cats.

Looking at the warrior’s massive shoulders and strong muscles, Leafpaw was relieved that he had not caught them trespassing. Unlike Mothwing, he kept strictly to the warrior code, and he was unlikely to listen to explanations. Not for the first time, Leafpaw felt that he reminded her of some other cat, but however hard she stared at him, she could not remember who.

“Come on,” Sorreltail meowed. “Are you going to stare at those RiverClan warriors all day? It’s time we were getting back, and then you can decide how much you’re going to tell Firestar.”

CHAPTER 5

Stormfur’s paws scrabbled on smooth grey rock. Heaving himself upwards, he reached the top of the boulder and turned to look down at his friends, his fur buffeted by the icy breeze.

“Come on,” he meowed. “It’s not so bad if you take a leap at it.”

Following the rising sun, he and the other cats had left the moorland behind and begun to climb. Now, as sunhigh approached on the second day of their homeward journey, the mountains they had seen from a distance stretched up in front of them even bigger than they had imagined, their sheer slopes black and forbidding, with wisps of cloud floating around their peaks. The soil beneath the cats’ paws was rough with pebbles, and little grew there except sparse grass and twisted thorn trees. There was no clear path; instead they followed winding narrow clefts and often had to turn back when they came up against rock walls with no way through. Thinking wistfully of the river sliding through deep, cool grasses at home, Stormfur half wished they had decided to return through Twolegplace instead.

Squirrelpaw bunched her hind legs and launched herself in a massive leap, following Stormfur up the boulder that blocked their path. “Mouse dung!” she gasped as she missed the top and began to slide back. Stormfur leaned over and sank his teeth into her neck fur, steadying her until her scraping claws propelled her up the last tail-length to sit beside him.

“Thanks!” Her green eyes glowed at him. “I know my name’s Squirrelpaw, but I never thought I’d wish that I was a squirrel!”

Stormfur let out a mrrow of laughter. “We’ll all wish we were squirrels if we get much more of this.”

“Hey!” Crowpaw’s voice rose aggressively from below. “Stand back, will you? How can I get up there with you two furballs standing in the way?”

Stormfur and Squirrelpaw stepped back from the top of the boulder, and a moment later Crowpaw joined them, his long limbs managing the jump easily. Ignoring the others, he turned back to help Feathertail, who scrambled up with a muttered curse as one of her claws snagged on the rock.

Stormfur was worried that the rat bite in Tawnypelt’s shoulder would stop her from climbing the boulder, and wondered if they would have to try finding a way round it, but to his relief her leap brought her almost to the top, where Crowpaw grabbed her by the scruff and hauled her up. Brambleclaw joined them last of all, shaking his ruffled tabby fur as he stood on top of the boulder and looked around. This close to sunhigh, there were few shadows to point them in the right direction and nothing but a sheer precipice in front of them, hiding what lay ahead.

“I suppose we go that way,” he meowed, flicking his tail towards a narrow ledge leading across the face of the rock. “What do you think?” he asked Stormfur.

Stormfur felt his pelt prickle as he looked at the ledge. A few straggling bushes had rooted themselves in cracks, but apart from that the rock was bare and if they slipped there would be nothing to hold on to.

“We can try,” he mewed doubtfully, rather surprised that Brambleclaw had asked his opinion. “There’s nowhere else, unless we go back.”

Brambleclaw nodded. “Bring up the rear, will you?” he asked. “We don’t know what might be lurking around here, and we need a strong cat to watch our back.”

Stormfur murmured agreement, feeling a warm glow that spread from his ears to his tail-tip at the ThunderClan cat’s praise. Brambleclaw was neither his leader nor his mentor, but Stormfur couldn’t help feeling strong admiration for the young warrior’s courage and the way he had taken the lead on this difficult journey.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Squirrelpaw announced as Brambleclaw squeezed his way along the ledge. “I don’t want to be a squirrel anymore. I’d rather be a bird!”

Stormfur brought up the rear as Brambleclaw had asked, his ears pricked for danger while he tried to hide his nervousness about the sheer drop, which tugged at him like an invisible weight. He hugged the rock face, placing each paw carefully and using his tail for balance. After a little while the breeze grew stronger, and Stormfur’s mind filled with terrifying images of himself or one of his friends blown right off the ledge and down to the ground below.

After a short while the ledge curved around the rock face, out of sight. Before Stormfur reached the turn, Tawnypelt, who was just in front of him, stopped abruptly, and from further ahead he heard Feathertail exclaim, “Oh, no!”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.