Code Of The Clans

AN HONORABLE WARRIOR DOES NOT NEED TO

KILL OTHER CATS TO WIN HIS OR HER BATTLES,

UNLESS THEY ARE OUTSIDE THE WARRIOR CODE

OR IT IS NECESSARY FOR SELF-DEFENSE.

I know you kittypets think we are fierce, bloodthirsty creatures who line our nests with the fur of our enemies, but we are not. Battles with cats who do not live in Clans are far more likely to result in death, because those cats often have no sense of the honor in a victory without bloodshed. Now you are about to discover what bitter experience taught—that the way of the warrior does not have to be steeped in blood.

The Medicine Cats Decide

Mossheart finished chewing the marigold leaves to a pulp and spat them carefully onto a leaf. “These should help the infection,” she told the mottled gray tom lying awkwardly on his side. The jagged cut smelled of crow-food and looked yellow around the edges, and the skin surrounding it was tender and inflamed.

“If I ever catch that mangy WindClan cat who did it, I’ll rip out his throat,” Smoketalon muttered through clenched teeth.

Mossheart shook her head. “Then his Clan will lose a warrior and swear vengeance on ShadowClan, and it will go on forever.

Back and forth, shedding blood on one side of the border or the other, until the stars grow old.”

“We have to defend our boundaries!” Smoketalon hissed.

“The warrior code says so.”

Mossheart sighed. The border skirmishes between

ShadowClan and its neighbor WindClan had grown more and more violent in recent moons, with warriors from both sides darting across the Thunderpath on raids. Neither Clan was short of food, and it wasn’t as if WindClan had developed a taste for frogs or ShadowClan had gained the swiftness needed to catch rabbits. It was nothing but mouse-brained pride that made each

Clan refuse to be the first to stop. A WindClan warrior had died last moon, and a ShadowClan she-cat had been lamed and would never be able to hunt or fight for her Clan again.

Mossheart finished packing the wound with juicy green pulp and laid cobwebs on top in an attempt to hold the edges of the cut together and keep the poultice in place. “Don’t move until I tell you,” she warned Smoketalon. She pushed some dry moss under his head to make him more comfortable, then padded out of her den to clear her head of the bitter marigold scent.

Several of her Clanmates were standing on the far side of the clearing, staring into the trees with their ears pricked. A white she-cat, her belly round with kits, turned to look at Mossheart.

“They’re fighting again,” she meowed. “Listen.”

Oh, StarClan, no!

Mossheart padded forward to stand beside Lilyfur. Mossheart’s pelt felt strangely hot and sticky, and there was a sour scent in her nose. She looked down. Her dark tortoiseshell fur was drenched in scarlet blood that ran down her legs and dripped onto the ground. Mossheart opened her mouth to cry out and choked on a thick, salty clot. Retching, she spat it out.

“Mossheart? Are you all right?”

Mossheart opened her eyes. Lilyfur was bending over her, and Mossheart’s fur was healthy and clean.

“Have you got a furball stuck in your throat?”

“No. I…” Mossheart straightened up. The only taste in her mouth was marigold juice. Faint sounds of battle drifted on the breeze: yowls and thuds as cats hit the ground, the rip of claws through fur. So much blood…

Mossheart bolted toward the noise.

“Wait!” Lilyfur called. “Where are you going?”

“We have to stop the battle!” Mossheart screeched without slowing down. Her vision must have been a message from StarClan that the cats in the forest were in danger of drowning in bloodshed.

Paws thudded behind her, and she realized Lilyfur was following. “Go back!” she panted. “Your kits…”

“My kits will be fine,” Lilyfur wheezed. “I’ve watched you enough times to be useful.” She risked a glance sideways at Mossheart. “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it? I mean, worse than before.”

Mossheart nodded.

The two cats burst out of the trees into a clear patch of ground not far from the Thunderpath. The air tasted of monsters and the bushes at the edge were black and shriveled from the creatures’ foul breath. A tangle of bleeding, screeching cats wrestled in the center of the clearing. Mossheart narrowed her eyes. Two large patrols, from the look of it, each containing several apprentices as well as warriors.

“Stop!” came a screech from the far side of the clearing, and a

small gray face appeared from the blackened bushes. “Stop right now!” he yowled again.

“It’s Swiftfoot!” Mossheart mewed, recognizing the WindClan medicine cat from Gatherings.

The gray tom stepped around the motionless body of one of his Clanmates with a rueful glance and marched up to the nearest tussle. “Enough!” he ordered. “There is nothing to be won here!”

The two cats paused and stared at him. They stepped back and Swiftfoot gave the WindClan warrior a shove with his nose.

“Go home!” he hissed. To Mossheart’s astonishment, the cat spun around and ran into the bushes that separated the clearing from the Thunderpath. The ShadowClan warrior, a dark brown tabby called Logfur, bunched his haunches, ready to leap back into battle, but Mossheart hurtled up to him and planted herself in her way.

“You heard what Swiftfoot said! Go home!”

“There’s a battle to be fought,” Logfur growled.

“Not anymore,” Mossheart replied.

Logfur glared at her, then slunk away, leaving a thin trail of blood from a cut on his tail.

“What in the name of StarClan are you doing?” demanded a voice.

Mossheart spun around. Silvermask stood behind her, the gray stripe on his face stained with blood. “Do you want us to lose?” he growled.

“No. I want you to live,” Mossheart spat. “Are you going to keep fighting until there are no warriors left at all?” She flicked her tail at the bodies that lay slumped on the ground. “Three more cats dead? How is this going to help?”

“Because two of them are WindClan, which means two fewer enemies for us.” Silvermask curled his lip in triumph.

Mossheart shook her head. “You are more mouse-brained than I thought,” she mewed sadly.

Behind them, the warriors were staggering apart, stumbling into the undergrowth in the direction of their own territories.

Silvermask eyed them in disgust. “Are you happy now, Mossheart?

We could have won that battle.”

“No, you couldn’t. Every battle is a loss.”

With a hiss, the deputy limped away. Mossheart decided she’d wait a while before telling him his wounds needed to be treated with goldenrod. Lilyfur padded up. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she offered.

Mossheart gazed around the clearing. Two WindClan cats wouldn’t be making their own way back to their camp, and neither would a ShadowClan apprentice, Spottedpaw. Mossheart gulped as she looked at his little brown body. A warm breeze stirred the fur on his flank, making it look as if he were breathing. But the scent of death hung over him, and his bright blue eyes were glazed and milky.

Swiftfoot glanced up at Mossheart. “I am sorry for your loss,” he meowed.

“And I for yours,” Mossheart replied dully.

“This has to stop!” Swiftfoot hissed, startling Mossheart. “If we lose any more warriors, our Clans will starve when leaf-bare comes. How can StarClan let this happen?”

“Have you been to the Moonstone to speak with them about it?” Mossheart asked.

“No. Have you?”

Mossheart shook her head.

“Then we should go. You and me, and all the other medicine cats. If we all show up, perhaps StarClan will be forced to listen.”

Mossheart stared at him. She’d met the other medicine cats at Gatherings but never alone, without other Clanmates around them. “How can we tell them what we want to do?”

“I’ll visit them. I’ll go on my own so it’s obvious I’m not a threat, and I’ll bring them all to the moor. Meet us by the pointed stone next sunrise.”

Mossheart knew that Swiftfoot was right. The medicine cats needed to unite. They had the power to heal their Clans—perhaps this meant they could stop battles before they started.

“I’ll be there,” she promised.

Swiftfoot popped his head around the corner of the gorse as Mossheart approached the pointed stone the next morning. “I thought you’d decided not to come,” he greeted her.

Kinktail, the RiverClan medicine cat whose tail had been crushed by a monster when she was a tiny kit, appeared behind

Swiftfoot. Her eyes were shining. “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” she breathed. “All five of us, going to share tongues with StarClan at the same time.”

“Maybe we should have done it before,” muttered Swiftfoot.

“Come on, we have a long way to go before sunset.”

He led them across the moor, padding confidently in the blazing sun. Mossheart walked beside Quailfeather of SkyClan, not envying her long, thick coat. Kinktail followed with Prickleface, the ThunderClan medicine cat with a temper to match his name. Mossheart waited for him to make a sour remark about what they were doing, but they traveled mostly in silence, speaking only when they needed to stop and find water. Above them, the sky was tinged purple as the sun slid behind the ridge, and a crisp half-moon appeared. Mossheart gasped.

“It’s red!”

The moon was washed with scarlet, darker around the edge.

Mossheart had never seen it look like that before.

“It’s the color of blood,” Quailfeather pointed out quietly.

Perhaps StarClan is already waiting for us, Mossheart thought.

Prickleface took the lead as they entered Mothermouth and began the long, echoey walk into darkness. Suddenly the blackness up ahead faded and a watery pink light started to filter along the stone walls. Prickleface quickened his pace, and soon they were running along the tunnel and exploding into the chamber where the Moonstone stood. The crystal reflected the scarlet moon tonight, giving off a reddish gleam that shone in the cats’ eyes.

Swiftfoot nodded to the Moonstone. “You know what to do,” he told his companions. “We have to ask StarClan if there is a way to stop the fighting.”

Mossheart lay down and pressed her muzzle against the base of the stone. It was ice-cold and she winced, but gradually it grew warm and she felt it begin to throb gently, as if she were curled against the belly of her mother. She was safe here, safe and loved.

No blood would ever be shed in the Moonstone chamber…

“ShadowClan! Attack!” Mossheart jumped as Silvermask yowled right next to her ear. She looked around and realized she was back

in the clearing by the Thunderpath, surrounded by a ShadowClan patrol rushing to hurl themselves on WindClan cats running toward them. She was watching yesterday’s battle from the very start.

“You can’t stop them, you know.”

Mossheart looked down. A small brown tom stood beside her, his brown coat flecked with ginger. “Spottedpaw! You’re not fighting!”

The apprentice looked up at her. “How can I? I’m dead, remember?”

“But this is yesterday!” Mossheart protested.

“No it’s not. It’s every day,” Spottedpaw mewed. “This battle, and battles like it, will happen over and over, for all the moons to come, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. We fight to protect our territories, our kits, our reputation among the other Clans. It’s what warriors do.”

“But you died because of it!”

Spottedpaw looked sad. “Yes. I wish I hadn’t. I wanted to be the best warrior ShadowClan had ever seen.”

Mossheart touched her muzzle to his fluffy ear. “I’m sorry, little one,” she murmured.

Spottedpaw was beginning to fade. “You can’t stop the fighting,” he repeated. “But maybe you can stop the dying. That WindClan warrior didn’t need to kill me. I knew I was beaten. If he’d let go of me, I’d have run away. He didn’t have to keep biting me, harder and harder…”

His blue eyes glowed for a moment after his body vanished, then they went out like setting suns. Mossheart closed her eyes as grief swept over her. What a bitter, bitter waste.

When she opened her eyes, she was back in the chamber, lying by the Moonstone. Her body was cold and cramped, so she stood up and stretched each leg in turn, arching her back and kinking her tail right over her ears.

“Well?” prompted Swiftfoot, who was sitting in the shadows with the other medicine cats. With a shock, Mossheart realized she was the last to wake up.

“I… I dreamed of Spottedpaw, the ShadowClan apprentice who died yesterday,” she began. She stopped when she saw the other cats nodding to one another.

“We all dreamed of fallen Clanmates,” meowed Quailfeather.

“Each one said the same: that we could never stop battles from happening, but that they knew they had lost their fight before they were killed. They didn’t have to die for the other cat to win.”

“Victory without death,” murmured Prickleface. “Do you think the Clans would accept it?”

“They have to,” meowed Swiftfoot. “StarClan has told us all the same thing: that a warrior does not have to kill to be victorious.”

“What if he is fighting for his life?” put in Kinktail, looking worried. “Against a fox or a rogue?”

Swiftfoot nodded. “There will be exceptions,” Swiftfoot determined, “because some battles can only end in death. But for

Clans fighting Clans, killing is not the answer.”

“When should we tell our leaders about this?” Mossheart asked.

“Why don’t we wait until the next Gathering?” Quailfeather suggested. “It’s only a quarter-moon away. We can tell them about our dreams and suggest a new law for the warrior code. The leaders can’t disagree with all five of us.”

“That’s right,” Swiftfoot meowed. “And from now on, I think we should meet every half-moon to share tongues with StarClan together. None of us wants to see our Clanmates die, and all of us would be happy never to treat a battle wound again. Perhaps boundaries don’t exist for medicine cats the way they do for our Clanmates. We should work together whenever we can, to preserve the peace and health of all the Clans.”

He led them back into the tunnel that led to the ridge and fresh air and starlight. When they emerged, the moon had cleared and shone as white as ever. The cats began to head down the slope, their paws whispering over the short grass. Mossheart was convinced she could hear another set of paws close by, even though she wasn’t near any of the other cats. Then she caught a trace of scent and knew who was running beside her.

Thank you, Spottedpaw whispered. Your law will save the lives of many, many cats. StarClan will honor all of you forever.

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