Forest Of Secrets

Chapter 2

Fireheart sniffed warily at a path where the snow had been trampled down by Twolegs. Lights shone from the Twoleg nest, and somewhere close by he could hear a dog barking. He remembered Barley telling him that the Twolegs let their dogs off the chains at night. He just hoped that he could locate Ravenpaw before he and Graystripe were noticed.

Graystripe slipped through the fence and padded up to him. The icy wind flattened his gray fur against his body. “Smell anything?” he asked.

Fireheart lifted his head to taste the air, and almost at once he caught the scent he was searching for, faint but familiar. Ravenpaw! “This way,” he mewed.

He crept along the path, the hard surface icy under his paws. Cautiously he followed the scent to a gap at the bottom of a barn door where the wood had rotted away.

He sniffed, drinking in the smell of hay and the strong, fresh scent of cats. “Ravenpaw?” he whispered. When there was no reply, he repeated, louder, “Ravenpaw?”

“Fireheart, is that you?” A surprised mew came from the darkness on the other side of the door.

“Ravenpaw!” Fireheart squeezed through the gap, thankful to be out of the wind. The scents of the barn flowed around him, and his mouth began to water as he detected the smell of mouse. The barn was dimly lit by moonlight filtering through a small window high under the roof. As his eyes adjusted, Fireheart saw another cat standing a few tail-lengths away.

His friend looked even sleeker and better fed than when Fireheart had seen him last. Fireheart realized how scrawny and bedraggled he must look in comparison.

Ravenpaw purred happily as he padded over to Fireheart and touched noses with him. “Welcome,” he mewed. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you,” Graystripe meowed, pushing his way through the gap in the door after Fireheart.

“Did you get WindClan back to their camp safely?” Ravenpaw asked. Fireheart and Graystripe had stayed with him during their journey to bring WindClan home.

“Yes,” mewed Fireheart, “but it’s a long story. We can’t—”

“Well, what’s going on here?” Another cat’s meow interrupted them.

Fireheart spun around, flattening his ears, ready to fight if this newcomer was a threat. Then he recognized Barley, the black-and-white loner who had willingly shared his home with Ravenpaw. “Hi, Barley,” Fireheart meowed, calming down. “We need to talk to Ravenpaw.”

“So I see,” Barley mewed. “And it must be important, to bring you across the moors in this weather.”

“Yes, it is,” Fireheart agreed. He glanced at the former ThunderClan apprentice, the urgency of his mission prickling through his fur. “Ravenpaw, we haven’t any time to waste.”

Ravenpaw looked puzzled. “You know you can talk to me as much as you want.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Barley offered. “Feel free to hunt. We’ve plenty of mice here.” He gave a friendly nod to the visiting cats, and squeezed out under the door.

“Hunt? Really?” meowed Graystripe. Fireheart felt sharp pangs of hunger grip his belly.

“Of course,” mewed Ravenpaw. “Look, why don’t you eat first? Then you can tell me why you’re here.”

“I know Tigerclaw killed Redtail,” Ravenpaw insisted. “I was there, and I saw him do it.”

The three cats were crouched in the hayloft of the Twoleg barn. Hunting had not taken very long. After the desparate struggle to find prey in the snow-covered forest, the barn seemed to the hungry ThunderClan warriors to be overflowing with mice. Now Fireheart was warm, and his stomach felt comfortably full. He would have liked to curl up and sleep in the soft, fragrant hay, but he knew that he had to talk to Ravenpaw right away if he and Graystripe were to get back to camp before their absence was noticed. “Tell us everything you remember,” he urged, giving Ravenpaw an encouraging nod.

Ravenpaw stared ahead of him, his eyes dark as he journeyed back in his mind to the battle at the Sunningrocks. Fireheart could see his confidence beginning to ebb. The black cat was losing himself in his memories, reliving the fear and the burden of what he knew.

“I’d been wounded in the shoulder,” he began, “and Redtail—he was our deputy then, as you know—told me to hide in a crack in the rock until it was safe to get away. I was just going to make a dash for it when I saw Redtail attack a RiverClan cat. I think it was that gray warrior called Stonefur. Redtail knocked Stonefur off his paws, and looked as if he was about to sink in his claws for some serious injury.”

“Why didn’t he?” Graystripe put in.

“Oakheart came out of nowhere,” Ravenpaw explained. “He sank his teeth into Redtail’s scruff and pulled him off Stonefur.” His voice shook as the memories flooded through his mind’s eye. “Stonefur ran away.” The cat paused, unconsciously crouching down as if he were scared of something very close by.

“What next?” Fireheart prompted gently.

“Redtail spat at Oakheart. He asked him if RiverClan warriors were unable to fight their own battles. Redtail was brave,” Ravenpaw added. “The RiverClan deputy was twice his size. And then…then Oakheart said a strange thing. He told Redtail, ‘No ThunderClan cat will ever harm that warrior.’”

“What?” Graystripe narrowed his eyes until they were yellow slits. “That doesn’t make sense. Are you sure you heard him right?”

“Positive,” insisted Ravenpaw.

“But the Clans fight all the time,” meowed Fireheart. “What’s so special about Stonefur?”

“I don’t know.” Ravenpaw shrugged, shying away from their searching questions.

“So what did Redtail do after Oakheart said that?” asked Graystripe.

Ravenpaw’s ears pricked up and his eyes widened. “He flew at Oakheart. He bowled him right off his paws and underneath a rocky overhang. I…I couldn’t see them, though I could hear them snarling. And then I heard a rumbling sound, and the rock collapsed on top of them!” He stopped, shivering.

“Please go on,” Fireheart mewed. He hated putting Ravenpaw through this, but he had to know the truth.

“I heard a screech from Oakheart and I saw his tail sticking out from under the rocks.” Ravenpaw closed his eyes, as if he wanted to shut out the sight, and then opened them again. “Just then I heard Tigerclaw behind me. He ordered me to go back to the camp, but I’d only gone a little way when I realized I had no idea if Redtail was okay after the rockfall. So I crept back, past all the RiverClan warriors that were running away. And when I got to the rocks, Redtail was charging out of the dust. His tail was straight up and his fur stood on end, but he was all right, not a scratch on him that I could see. And he ran straight into Tigerclaw, who was in the shadows.”

“And was that when—” Graystripe began.

“Yes.” Ravenpaw’s claws flexed as if he was imagining himself back in the battle. “Tigerclaw grabbed Redtail and pinned him down. Redtail struggled, but he couldn’t break free. And…” Ravenpaw swallowed, and stared at the floor. “Tigerclaw sank his teeth into Redtail’s throat, and it was all over.” He dropped his chin onto his paws.

Fireheart moved closer to him, and pressed his body against Ravenpaw’s flank. “So Oakheart died when the rocks fell on him. It was an accident,” he murmured. “No cat killed him.”

“That still doesn’t prove that Tigerclaw killed Redtail,” Graystripe pointed out. “I don’t see that any of this helps us at all.”

For a heartbeat Fireheart stared at him, discouraged. Then his eyes widened and he sat up, paws tingling with excitement. “Yes, it does. If we can prove the rockfall story, it shows that Tigerclaw was lying when he said Oakheart killed Redtail, and when he claimed to have killed Oakheart in revenge.”

“Just a minute,” Graystripe interrupted. “Ravenpaw, at the Gathering you didn’t say anything about falling rocks. You made it sound as if Redtail killed Oakheart.”

“Did I?” Ravenpaw blinked, and struggled to focus on Graystripe. “I didn’t mean to. This is what really happened, I promise.”

“And that’s why Bluestar wouldn’t listen to us,” Fireheart went on excitedly. “She couldn’t believe that Redtail would have killed another deputy. But Redtail didn’t kill him. Bluestar will have to take us seriously now!”

Fireheart’s brain was whirling with everything they had discovered. He wanted to ask Ravenpaw more questions, but he could smell the fear-scent on his friend, and saw the old haunted look in his eyes, as if telling his story had brought back all his unhappy memories of ThunderClan. “Is there any more you can tell us, Ravenpaw?” he mewed gently.

Ravenpaw shook his head.

“This means so much to the Clan,” Fireheart told him. “Hopefully now we stand a chance of convincing Bluestar that Tigerclaw is dangerous.”

“If she listens,” Graystripe pointed out. “It’s a pity you told her Ravenpaw’s first story,” he added to Fireheart. “Now he’s changed everything, she won’t know what to believe.”

“But he hasn’t changed everything,” Fireheart protested, as Ravenpaw flinched at Graystripe’s irritable tone. “We misunderstood, that’s all. I’ll convince Bluestar somehow,” he added. “At least we know the truth now.”

The black cat looked a little happier, but Fireheart could see that he didn’t want to think about the past anymore. He settled beside Ravenpaw, purring encouragement, and for a short while the three cats shared tongues.

Then Fireheart pushed himself to his paws. “It’s time we were on our way,” he meowed.

“Take care,” Ravenpaw mewed. “And watch out for Tigerclaw.”

“Don’t worry,” Fireheart assured him. “You’ve given us what we need to deal with him.” With Graystripe behind him, he slid under the door and ventured out into the snow.

“It’s freezing out here!” Graystripe grumbled as they bounded down to the fence at the edge of the Twoleg farm. “We should have taken a couple more of those mice to feed the Clan,” he added.

“Yeah, right,” Fireheart retorted. “And what would you tell Tigerclaw when he asked you where you found such fat mice in this weather?”

The moon was close to setting, and soon the sky would begin to pale toward dawn. The chill of the snow soon penetrated Fireheart’s winter-thick fur, even colder after the warmth of the barn. His legs were aching with weariness; it had been a long night, and they still had to cross WindClan’s territory before they could rest in their own camp. Fireheart could not stop thinking about what Ravenpaw had told them. He was sure that his friend was telling the truth, but it would be hard to convince the rest of the Clan. Bluestar had already refused to believe Ravenpaw’s original story.

Yet that was when Fireheart thought Redtail had killed Oakheart. Bluestar could not accept that Redtail would kill another warrior unnecessarily. Now Fireheart understood the real story, that Oakheart had died by accident… But how could Fireheart accuse Tigerclaw again unless he had something to back up what Ravenpaw had told him?

“The RiverClan cats would know,” he realized aloud, pausing under a rocky outcrop on the moorland slope, where the snow was not so thick.

“What?” meowed Graystripe, padding up to him to share the shelter. “Know what?”

“How Oakheart died,” Fireheart replied. “They must have seen Oakheart’s body. They would be able to tell us whether he died from a rockfall, and not a death blow from a warrior.”

“Yes, the marks on his body would prove it,” agreed Graystripe.

“And they might know what Oakheart meant when he said that no ThunderClan cat should attack Stonefur,” Fireheart added. “We need to speak to a RiverClan warrior who took part in the battle, maybe Stonefur himself.”

“But you can’t just walk into the RiverClan camp and ask,” Graystripe protested. “Think of how tense it was at the Gathering—it’s too soon after the battle.”

“I know one RiverClan warrior who would welcome you,” Fireheart murmured.

“If you mean Silverstream, yes, I could ask her,” Graystripe agreed. “Now, can we please get back to the camp before my paws freeze completely?”

The two cats padded onward, more slowly now as weariness made their limbs heavy. They were within sight of Fourtrees when they spotted three other cats climbing the hillside. The breeze carried the scent of a WindClan patrol to Fireheart. Not wanting to explain their presence in WindClan territory, he looked swiftly around for cover, but the snow stretched smoothly on all sides, with no rocks or bushes nearby. And it was clear that the WindClan cats had already seen them, as they changed direction to meet them.

Fireheart recognized the familiar uneven gait of the Clan deputy, Deadfoot, with the tabby warrior Tornear, and his apprentice, Runningpaw.

“Hello, Fireheart,” called Deadfoot, limping up with a puzzled look in his eyes. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Er…yes,” Fireheart admitted, dipping his head respectfully. “We just…we picked up a ShadowClan scent trail, and it led us up here.”

“ShadowClan on our territory!” Deadfoot’s fur began to bristle.

“I reckon it was an old scent,” Graystripe put in hastily. “Nothing to worry about. We’re sorry we crossed your border.”

“You’re welcome here,” meowed Tornear. “The other Clans would have destroyed us in the last battle if your Clan hadn’t helped. Now we’re sure they’ll keep away. They know they have ThunderClan to reckon with.”

Fireheart felt embarrassed at Tornear’s praise. He and Graystripe had helped the WindClan cats in the past, but this time he was uncomfortable with the thought that any cats from WindClan had seen them on their territory. “We’d best be getting back,” he muttered. “Everything seems quiet enough up here.”

“May StarClan light your path,” meowed Deadfoot gratefully.

The other WindClan cats wished Fireheart and Graystripe good hunting, and went on toward their own camp.

“That was bad luck,” Fireheart growled as he and Graystripe padded down to Fourtrees.

“Why?” asked Graystripe. “The WindClan cats didn’t mind us on their territory. We’re all friends now.”

“Use your brains, Graystripe,” Fireheart mewed. “What if Deadfoot mentions that he saw us to Bluestar at the next Gathering? She’s bound to wonder what we were doing out here!”

Graystripe stopped. “Mousedung!” he spat. “I never thought of that.” His eyes met Fireheart’s, and Fireheart saw his own uneasy feelings reflected there. “Bluestar won’t like it if she finds out we’re sneaking around investigating Tigerclaw.”

Fireheart shrugged. “Let’s just hope we can settle all this before the next Gathering. Now come on; we ought to try to catch something to take back with us.”

He set off again, picking up the pace until the two cats were racing over the snow. As they skirted the hollow at Fourtrees and entered their own forest territory, he relaxed a little, pausing to drink the air in the hope of picking up the scent of prey. Graystripe sniffed hopefully among the roots of a nearby tree, and came back looking disappointed.

“Nothing,” he grumbled. “Not a single mouse—not even a whisker!”

“We haven’t got time to keep looking,” Fireheart decided. He saw that the sky was already growing lighter above the trees. Time was running out, and their absence from camp was more likely to be noticed with every heartbeat.

The dawn light was growing stronger as they reached the ravine. Limbs aching with weariness, muscles stiff with cold, Fireheart led the way silently between the boulders toward the gorse tunnel. Thankful to be home at last, he bounded into the tunnel’s dark mouth. As he emerged into the camp, he skidded to a halt so abruptly that Graystripe cannoned into him from behind.

“Move, you big furball!” Graystripe gave a muffled mew.

Fireheart didn’t reply. Sitting a few tail-lengths away, in the middle of the clearing, was Tigerclaw. His head was sunk below his massive shoulders, and his yellow eyes were gleaming with triumph.

“Maybe you’d like to tell me where you’ve been?” he growled. “And why it took you so long to get back from the Gathering?”