A Dangerous Path

Chapter 27

Fireheart struggled desperately to get free, lashing out with his hind paws to claw tufts of fur from his enemy’s belly. The ShadowClan leader barely moved. The reek of his scent was in Fireheart’s mouth and nostrils, and his amber eyes glared into Fireheart’s own.

“Greet StarClan for me,” he snarled.

“Only after you!” Fireheart gasped.

To his astonishment, Tigerstar released him. Lurching to his paws, Fireheart saw the ShadowClan leader double back and spring up the nearest tree. Before he had time to wonder what was going on, he heard a deafening howl and felt the ground shake under his paws. He spun around to see the pack leader looming over him, its dripping jaws wide. There was no time to run. Fireheart shut his eyes and prepared to meet StarClan.

Pain stabbed him as sharp teeth met in his scruff. His limbs flailed helplessly as the dog lifted him from the ground and shook him from side to side. He twisted in the air, struggling to claw eyes, jowls, tongue, but his thrashing paws met nothing. The forest spun about him. He was aware of more barking, and the stink of dog was everywhere.

“StarClan, help me!” Fireheart let out a yowl of terror and despair. This was not just his death, but the end of his whole Clan. His plan had failed. “StarClan, where are you?”

Suddenly a yowl sounded close by. Fireheart was flung to the ground, the breath driven out of his body. The grip on his neck loosened and was gone. Dazed, he looked up to see a blue-gray shape ramming into the side of the lead dog.

“Bluestar!” he yowled.

The force of his leader’s impact had sent the dog staggering to the very edge of the gorge. Its barking changed to a high-pitched howl of terror as its huge paws scrabbled for a grip on the turf. The loose soil crumbled away under its weight and it fell, but as it disappeared over the edge its snapping jaws closed on Bluestar’s leg, and wrenched her over as well.

Two of the other dogs, hard behind their leader, could not pull up in time. Blindly they charged over the edge of the gorge and vanished, howling, while the remaining dogs skidded to a halt, their fierce barks fading to piteous whimpers. Before Fireheart could force himself to his paws, they had backed away from the edge and fled into the forest.

Fireheart staggered to the edge of the gorge and looked over. Water foamed white beneath him. For a heartbeat he glimpsed the gaping muzzle of the pack leader struggling among the waves, before it vanished again.

“Bluestar!” Fireheart screamed. What had his leader been doing over here? He had sent her with the rest of the Clan to Sunningrocks.

Too stunned to move, Fireheart gazed down into the river. Suddenly he saw a small gray head bob to the surface, paws thrashing wildly. Bluestar was still alive! But the torrent was sweeping her downstream, and Fireheart knew that she was too frail to swim for long.

There was only one thing to do. Yowling, “Bluestar, hold on! I’m coming!” he launched himself down the steep side of the gorge and into the river.

Water clutched Fireheart like a huge paw and buffeted him from side to side. The icy cold of the torrent took his breath away. His paws worked furiously as he tried to swim, but the force of the current rolled him under. He had lost sight of Bluestar before he even entered the water; he could see nothing but the foam that bubbled all around him.

As his head broke surface he gasped for air, managing to stay afloat as the racing torrent swept him downstream. Then he spotted Bluestar again, a few fox-lengths ahead of him, her fur plastered to her head and her jaws gaping. Kicking out strongly, Fireheart closed the gap between them, and as Bluestar began to sink again he fastened his teeth in her scruff.

The extra weight dragged him down. All Fireheart’s instincts screamed at him to let Bluestar go and save his own life. But he made himself hold on, while he forced his limbs to go on working and bring his drowning leader back to the surface. He almost lost his grip on her as something slammed into them, and he caught a glimpse of a dog rolling over in the current, its eyes glazed with terror as it floundered helplessly and vanished again.

A sudden shadow fell across them and was gone as the current carried them under the Twoleg bridge and away from the looming cliffs. Fireheart could see the river bank now and he struck out toward it, but his limbs were aching with weariness. Bluestar was a deadweight, unable to help herself. Fireheart knew that he could not let go of her to gulp in more air, and his senses began to spin away into darkness as his head went under again.

Barely conscious, he made one more massive effort, thrusting at the water with his paws. But when he resurfaced he could not see the bank, and he had lost all sense of direction. His limbs stiffened with panic as he knew he was going to drown.

Suddenly Bluestar’s weight grew less. Blinking water out of his eyes, Fireheart saw another head bobbing in the water beside him, teeth firmly gripping Bluestar’s fur. He recognized the blue-gray pelt and almost forgot to swim in his shock.

It was Mistyfoot!

At the same moment he heard Stonefur’s voice from his other side. “Let go. We’ve got her now.”

Fireheart did as he was told and let Stonefur take his place. The two RiverClan cats propelled Bluestar through the water toward the bank. Without the need to support the heavy she-cat, Fireheart managed to flounder after them until he felt the river bottom beneath his paws. On flatter ground now, carried by the river out of the steep-sided gorge, he was able to splash his way to the safety of the bank on the RiverClan side.

Coughing as he gasped air into his straining lungs, Fireheart shook water from his fur and looked around to see what had become of Bluestar. Mistyfoot and Stonefur had laid the Clan leader down on her side on the pebbles. Water trickled from her parted jaws, and she did not move.

“Bluestar!” Mistyfoot exclaimed.

“Is she dead?” Fireheart asked hoarsely, staggering up to them.

“I think she—”

Stonefur was interrupted by a loud yowling. “Fireheart! Fireheart! Watch out!”

It was Graystripe’s voice. Fireheart turned to see Tigerstar racing across the Twoleg bridge with the gray warrior hard behind him. As the ShadowClan leader swerved along the bank toward Fireheart and the others, Graystripe darted in front of the massive tabby and whirled around to face him.

“Keep back!” he snarled. “Don’t touch them.”

Rage lent strength to Fireheart. His leader lay on the riverbank, her last life ebbing away; whatever she had said or done, she was still his leader, and he had never intended her to die for the sake of the Clan. And all this was because of Tigerstar!

He bounded upstream to stand beside Graystripe, and the ShadowClan leader halted a couple of fox-lengths away. Clearly he was thinking twice about taking both of them on at the same time.

From behind him Fireheart heard Mistyfoot gasp. “Fireheart! She’s alive!”

He bared his teeth at Tigerstar. “Come one step closer, and I’ll throw you in the river with the dogs,” he growled. “Graystripe, make him stay back.”

Graystripe nodded, unsheathing his claws, and Tigerstar let out a long hiss of fury and frustration.

Fireheart raced back to Bluestar and crouched down beside her. She still lay on the pebbles, though now Fireheart could see her chest rising and falling with each jagged breath. “Bluestar?” he whispered. “Bluestar, it’s Fireheart. You’re all right now. You’re safe.”

Her eyes blinked open and focused on the two RiverClan warriors. For a heartbeat she did not seem to recognize them, and then her eyes stretched wide, softening with pride. “You saved me,” she murmured.

“Shhh. Don’t try to talk,” Mistyfoot urged her.

Bluestar seemed not to hear. “I want to tell you something… I want to ask you to forgive me for sending you away. Oakheart promised me Graypool would be a good mother to you.”

“She was,” Stonefur meowed tersely.

Fireheart tensed. Last time they spoke to Bluestar, the two RiverClan warriors had spat venom at her, hating her for what she had done. Would they turn on her now, defenseless as she was?

“I owe Graypool so much,” Bluestar went on. Her voice was faint and uneven. “Oakheart too, for mentoring you so well. I watched you as you grew up, and I saw how much you had to give to the Clan who adopted you.” A shudder passed through her body, and she stopped speaking for a moment. “If I had made a different choice, you would have given all your strength to ThunderClan. Forgive me,” she rasped.

Mistyfoot and Stonefur exchanged an uncertain glance.

“She suffered a lot of pain for her choice,” Fireheart couldn’t help putting in. “Please forgive her.”

For a heartbeat the two warriors still hesitated. Then Mistyfoot bent her head to lick her mother’s fur, and Fireheart felt his legs shake with relief. “We forgive you, Bluestar,” she murmured.

“We forgive you,” Stonefur echoed.

Weak as she was, Bluestar began to purr with delight. Fireheart’s throat felt tight as he watched the two RiverClan cats crouched over his leader—their mother—sharing tongues with her for the first time.

A furious hiss from Graystripe made him turn his head to see that Tigerstar had taken a step forward. The massive tabby’s eyes were wide with astonishment. Fireheart knew that until now Tigerstar had not known who was the mother of the kits that ThunderClan had given away.

“Don’t come any nearer, Tigerstar,” he hissed. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Turning back to Bluestar, he saw that her eyes were closing and her breath was coming fast and shallow.

“What can we do?” he asked Mistyfoot anxiously. “This is her last life, and she’ll never make it back to the ThunderClan camp. Will one of you go and fetch your medicine cat?”

“It’s too late for that, Fireheart.” It was Stonefur who replied, his voice low and gentle. “She is on her way to StarClan.”

“No!” Fireheart protested. He crouched beside Bluestar and pressed his muzzle against hers. “Bluestar—Bluestar, wake up! We’ll get help for you—hold on just a bit longer.”

Bluestar’s eyes flickered open again, looking not at Fireheart, but at something just past his shoulder. Her gaze was clear and filled with peace. “Oakheart,” she murmured. “Have you come for me? I’m ready.”

“No!” Fireheart protested again. All his recent difficulties with Bluestar faded away. He remembered only the noble leader she had been, wise and inspiring, and how she had mentored him when he came into the Clan as a kittypet. And in the end StarClan had been kind to her. She had come out of the shadows to die as nobly as she had lived, saving her Clan by sacrificing herself.

“Bluestar, don’t leave us,” he begged.

“I must,” his leader whispered. “I have fought my last battle.” She was panting in her efforts to speak. “When I saw the Clan at Sunningrocks, the strong helping the weak…and I knew you and the others had gone to confront the pack…I knew my Clan was loyal. I knew StarClan had not turned their backs on us. I knew…” Her voice failed and she struggled to continue. “I knew that I could not leave you to face the danger alone.”

“Bluestar…” Fireheart’s voice shook with the pain of parting, and yet his heart leaped to hear that his leader knew he was not a traitor.

Bluestar fixed her blue gaze on him. Fireheart thought he could already see the shimmer of StarClan in her eyes. “Fire will save the Clan,” she murmured, and Fireheart remembered the mysterious prophecy that he had heard from his earliest days in ThunderClan. “You never understood, did you?” Bluestar went on. “Not even when I gave you your apprentice name, Firepaw. And I doubted it myself, when fire raged through our camp. Yet I see the truth now. Fireheart, you are the fire who will save ThunderClan.”

Fireheart could do nothing but stare at his beloved leader. He felt as if his whole body had turned to stone. Above his head, wind tore the clouds into shreds, letting a ray of sunshine strike down and touch his pelt to flame, just as it had in the clearing when he first arrived in the Clan, so many moons ago.

“You will be a great leader.” Bluestar’s voice was the merest whisper. “One of the greatest the forest has ever known. You will have the warmth of fire to protect your Clan and the fierceness of fire to defend it. You will be Firestar, the light of ThunderClan.”

“No,” Fireheart protested. “I can’t. Not without you, Bluestar.”

But it was too late. Bluestar sighed softly, and the light died from her eyes. Mistyfoot let out a low wailing sound and pressed her nose to her mother’s fur. Stonefur crouched close to her, his head bowed.

“Bluestar!” Fireheart meowed desperately, but there was no response. The leader of ThunderClan had given up her last life, and gone to hunt with StarClan forever.

Fireheart rose stiffly to his paws. He had to dig his claws into the earth as his head spun, and for a moment he feared that he might fall into the sky. His fur prickled, and he felt as if his thudding heart would burst through his chest.

“Fireheart,” Graystripe murmured. “Oh, Fireheart.”

The gray warrior had left Tigerstar and walked silently over to watch his leader die. Now Fireheart saw that his friend’s amber gaze was fixed on him with something like awe, and as their eyes met, Graystripe dipped his head in deepest respect. Fireheart stiffened in horror, longing to protest; he wanted the comfort of their old, easy friendship, not this formal acknowledgment from a warrior to his Clan leader.

Beyond Graystripe, he saw Tigerstar staring at the cats huddled on the shore, amazement and fury in his eyes. Before Fireheart could say anything, the ShadowClan leader spun around and raced across the Twoleg bridge, back toward his own territory.

Fireheart let him go. He had to deal with his own terrified, hunted Clan before he tried to settle old scores. But what Tigerstar had done that day would never be forgotten, not by any cat in ThunderClan. “We’ll need to fetch some of the others,” he mewed hoarsely to Graystripe. “We must get Bluestar’s body back to camp.”

Graystripe dipped his head again. “Yes, Fireheart.”

“We’ll help,” Stonefur offered, standing up and facing the ThunderClan cats.

“We would be honored,” added Mistyfoot, her eyes clouded with sorrow. “I would like to see our mother laid to rest in her Clan.”

“Thank you, both of you,” meowed Fireheart. He took a deep breath, drew himself up, and shook his drying fur. He felt as if the weight of the whole Clan had descended on his shoulders, and yet, in a heartbeat, it began to seem possible that he could bear it.

He was the leader of ThunderClan now. With the death of the lead dog, the threat of the pack had gone from the forest, and his Clan was waiting for him, safe, at Sunningrocks. Sandstorm would be waiting for him too.

“Come on,” he meowed to Graystripe. “Let’s go home.”