Sign Of The Moon

Chapter 14

“Why did I ever want to leave the lake behind?” Dovewing panted as she scrambled up a narrow gully, her paws slipping on hard-packed snow. “I can’t believe cats actually live here!”

Foxleap, slogging up the gully a tail-length ahead of her, simply grunted in reply. The two ThunderClan cats were almost at the rear of the patrol; only Swoop, one of the cave-guards, followed them, glancing around as she moved confidently over the ice. Stormfur and the other two prey-hunters, Gray and Splash, were strung out ahead, while Crag took the lead. They were no more than blurred shapes to Dovewing, glimpsed through the flurries of snow.

It’s almost newleaf in the forest! she thought, shivering.

A shape loomed up beside her. “Are you okay? Do you want to lean on my shoulder for a bit?”

Dovewing recognized Stormfur. “No, I’m fine,” she gasped. “I can keep going.”

Stormfur dipped his head, his eyes warm and friendly, amber like the glow of tiny suns in this wasteland of white. “Just say if you need help.”

“They haven’t got their snow-paws yet,” Splash remarked, halting to let Stormfur, Foxleap, and Dovewing catch up. “Don’t worry,” she added with a gentle mrrow of laughter. “You’ll be snow cats before you know it.”

“I’m a snow cat now!” Foxleap meowed with a shiver, shaking lumps of snow from his pelt.

I wish Jayfeather would work out what we’re supposed to be doing here, Dovewing thought as she clambered out of yet another drift. Then we could all go home.

To her relief the snow died to a few drifting flakes, then stopped, and the clouds began to clear, torn into tatters by the wind. A little farther on, the walls of the gully tapered off, leaving the cats at the top of an exposed peak. Dovewing gasped as she emerged from the shelter of the gully; the wind felt like thorns in her throat, and the blast almost carried her off her paws. Digging her claws into the ice and grit, she raised her head and looked around. They were surrounded by an endless roll of mountain peaks, covered with snow. There was beauty in the jagged shapes and stark colors, but it was nothing like home.

“Look!”

A sharp meow from Crag startled Dovewing; following the cave-guard’s gaze, she spotted two tiny dots circling far above them in the pale sky.

“What’s that?” Foxleap asked.

“Eagle attack!” Swoop’s voice was terse.

The two dots grew larger; Dovewing realized that they were circling lower, homing in on the group of cats.

“What should we do?” she mewed, fighting panic as she gazed around for cover, while Foxleap crouched and slid his claws out as if he was ready to do battle.

“This way!” Crag and Swoop shoved the two Clan cats back into the mouth of the gully and under the shelter of an overhanging rock. Stormfur, Gray, and Splash crouched down beside them, while Crag and Swoop backed under the outer edge of the overhang, their claws out and their teeth bared.

A heartbeat later the eagles swooped down, their wide brown wings brushing the rocky opening. Dovewing caught a glimpse of glaring yellow eyes and cruel hooked beaks before the birds pulled away again with angry screeches that echoed among the rocks.

“They’re our prey—but they’re attacking us!” she yelped.

“We don’t often hunt eagles,” Splash explained calmly. “But we hunt the things that eagles do, like hares and mice and smaller birds.”

“So we’re in competition,” Gray added.

And birds don’t respect borders, Dovewing realized with a shudder.

Crag was peering out from under the overhang. “They’ve gone,” he reported. “Let’s be on our way.”

Dovewing felt very exposed as she ventured out from under the rock. She imagined those cruel talons sinking into her shoulders, whisking her up into the sky. As she padded across the peak and down into a gully on the far side, she kept glancing up, trying to send out her senses to track the position of the eagles.

The next thing she knew, the ground gave way under her paws. She let out a yowl of alarm, cut off as she landed on soft snow. Blinking in confusion, Dovewing realized that she had fallen down a narrow cleft in the path. Foxleap was gazing down at her, his head and ears outlined against the sky.

“Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.

Dovewing floundered to her paws, the snow too loose to give her a proper footing. “I think so,” she mewed. Glancing up at the sheer stone walls that stretched up around her, she added, “I don’t think I can get out.”

“Okay, don’t panic.” Foxleap was replaced by Crag, his voice brisk and confident. “We’ll get you out.”

How? Dovewing wondered helplessly. She remembered what happened when Icecloud fell into the hole, back in the forest. They had used a branch and an ivy tendril to get her out. But there are no branches or ivy here!

“Here, I’ll do it. I’m the smallest,” Splash meowed. She backed over the edge of the gap, clinging to the top with her forepaws while she dangled her tail down to Dovewing. “Can you grab my tail?”

“But I’ll hurt you!” Dovewing exclaimed.

“No, I’ll be fine,” Splash assured her. “Just do it.”

Dovewing stretched up as far as she could and sank her teeth into Splash’s tail. Thankfully the wall of the cleft wasn’t as sheer as she had first thought; there were paw holds that she could use to balance herself and take at least part of the weight off Splash’s tail.

Crag and Stormfur were holding on to the she-cat, bracing her, as Dovewing scrambled over the edge of the cleft and collapsed on one side. “Thank you!” she gasped. “I’m really sorry!”

Splash gave her tail a couple of experimental flicks. “You’re welcome,” she replied. “No harm done.”

“Next time I’ll watch where I’m putting my paws,” Dovewing promised. Shivering, she hauled herself up. Her pelt was covered with snow and grit; she felt she would never be clean or warm again.

“Do you want to go back to the cave?” Stormfur asked. “Swoop will go with you.”

Dovewing shook her head. She didn’t want to be a nuisance and leave the patrol with only one cave-guard, especially with eagles about. “No, I can keep going,” she insisted.

Foxleap padded up and gave her ear a quick lick. “Just tell me if you need any help,” he whispered.

Dovewing’s muscles ached and her pads were sore from scrambling out of the cleft, but she kept pace with the others as Crag led the patrol down the gully and across a ridge before halting in front of a tall spike of stone where a narrow stream bubbled up from between two rocks and wound away into the distance. The surface was frozen, but Dovewing could hear water trickling underneath.

“This is a border marker,” Crag told the Clan cats, angling his ears at the rocky spike. “Gray, would you renew the scent markers?”

While they waited, Dovewing gazed across the rolling hills, the wind buffeting her fur. “Where’s the next marker?” she asked Crag.

The cave-guard pointed with his tail. “You see that dead tree, next to the stream? That’s it.”

On the far side of the valley, almost as far as the distance between ThunderClan’s camp and the ShadowClan border, was a tiny stunted tree clinging to the edge of a narrow gully. Dovewing stared at Crag; she hadn’t realized that the Tribe’s territory was so big. “But it’s so far away! How do you check the borders? It must take the whole day to do one patrol.”

“We patrol only certain sections,” Swoop explained, padding up to stand beside Crag. “Other groups will protect the rest of the border.”

Dovewing nodded, privately thinking that it wouldn’t take a lot of effort for enemies to figure out there were gaps between each patrol. She cast out her senses and almost at once picked up the sound of cats far away, beyond the border.

They must be the intruders the Tribe is always talking about. But they don’t sound threatening now. They’re hunting, but they’re not trespassing on Tribe territory.

She tensed as she heard the raucous screech of an eagle and instinctively looked up, but the bird was no more than a speck in the sky, well away from where her patrol was standing. Farther away still, she could hear the answering call of eagle chicks and caught a glimpse of them, bald and scrawny, in a mountaintop nest.

Then Dovewing heard a scratching sound much closer by. She identified a vole, pushing its way through the moss at the edge of the frozen stream, hidden by the ice that overhung the bank. She could smell it, too, just a faint trace beneath the clean, sharp scent of snow.

“Vole!” she yowled, leaping for the stream.

To her amazement, Stormfur knocked her aside; Dovewing sprawled on the ice at the water’s edge.

“What—?” she began, scrambling up.

“If you fall through the snow into the stream, you’ll get dangerously cold,” Stormfur explained. “Sorry if I hurt you.”

Dovewing shook her head. “I’m fine.” Is he saying that I could die, just from getting wet? “But there’s prey under there,” she added, guessing that none of the others had heard the vole. Listening again, she realized that the vole had stopped moving. Mouse dung! It heard us. That will make it far more difficult to catch.

Gray and Splash padded up, their ears pricked and their jaws parted to pick up the least trace of prey. “Well done for spotting it,” Splash murmured to Dovewing. “Can you hear it now?”

Dovewing stretched all her senses, and finally heard a faint, cautious scuffling that told her the vole was on the move again. Without speaking, she nodded toward the spot on the bank where she thought the vole was hiding.

“Just under the bank,” Gray whispered, and Splash nodded.

Taking up positions on either side of the vole, the two Tribe prey-hunters dug down into the snow with strong, thin legs. Crag and Swoop stood guard over each of their Tribemates.

“The cave-guards stay with the prey-hunters,” Stormfur explained to Dovewing and Foxleap. “See how they’re watching the sky? They’ll warn Gray and Splash if any eagles appear.”

Dovewing noticed that both prey-hunters were pushing through the snow at an angle, so that they left the top layer undisturbed. “They’re getting as close as they can to the vole without alerting it,” she murmured. “We might try that back home if we get snow next leaf-bare.”

“Right,” Stormfur meowed. “And when the vole does realize, there’s a cat waiting wherever it decides to run.”

Just as he spoke, there was a splash as both cats reached the stream. They sprang back, and the vole appeared scurrying downstream along the bank next to Splash. The she-cat pounced, but the vole darted to one side and her paws hit the icy surface of the stream.

“Mouse dung!” Splash snarled.

“Bad luck!” Foxleap called to her.

Meanwhile the vole fled back upstream, where Gray was waiting for it. He pounced from the bank right on top of it and killed it with a swift bite to the back of its neck. “Thanks to the Tribe of Endless Hunting!” he mewed.

“Great teamwork!” Foxleap exclaimed.

Dovewing murmured agreement, but privately she was a bit shocked that it had taken four cats to catch one miserable little vole.

“Are you going to bury it while we do the rest of the patrol?” Foxleap went on. “That’s what we do in the forest.”

Gray shook his head. “If we did that out here, it would freeze,” he pointed out. “I’ll take it back to the cave. In the Tribe, we like to eat our prey warm.”

He picked up the vole and bounded away, back in the direction they had come. Crag watched until he had gone, his lithe gray shape hidden by the rocks, then turned and headed toward the next border marker. Dovewing followed, and Splash came to pad alongside her.

“It must be really strange for you up here,” the tabby she-cat began in a friendly tone. “What’s it like, living in a Clan?”

For a few heartbeats Dovewing was silent, hardly knowing where to start. “There are more of us, to start with,” she replied at last. “Four Clans, not just one. We share our borders, but we live by the warrior code, and don’t often have to worry about other Clans invading us. And our territories aren’t as big as yours, so it doesn’t take as long to patrol the border.”

“We need a big territory,” Splash responded defensively. “Prey’s scarce up here, and we have to survive.”

“Oh, I understand that,” Dovewing assured her. “And we don’t have cave-guards or prey-hunters,” she went on. “In a Clan, every cat learns how to do all the duties.”

Splash nodded. “Stormfur told us about that. But surely it makes sense for each cat to specialize in what they do best?”

Dovewing was beginning to feel embarrassed. She wasn’t trying to say that Clan life was so much better than Tribe life, even though Splash seemed determined to defend her Tribe.

“Cats have survived here for many, many seasons,” Splash meowed quietly, as if she had guessed Dovewing’s thoughts. “I couldn’t live anywhere else. This is where I belong, between the snow and the sky.”

“I feel the same way about the forest,” Dovewing admitted. “I need grass and earth beneath my paws, and the rustle of branches over my head.”

Splash gave her a long, considering look. “I think you’d do just fine if you lived up here,” she meowed. “Look at the way you heard that vole under the snow!”

“I couldn’t leave my home,” Dovewing replied. “Not forever.”

Splash sighed, pausing for a moment to gaze out over the snow-covered peaks. “I might have to leave mine,” she mewed sadly.

“You mean if Stoneteller dies without choosing a successor?” Dovewing asked. “Can’t you just choose one yourselves?”

Splash stared at her, eyes stretched wide with shock. “Never! That’s for the Tribe of Endless Hunting to decide. Do they watch over you as well?”

Dovewing shook her head. Quickening her pace so they wouldn’t get left behind by the rest of the patrol, she explained, “No, we have StarClan to watch over us. They’re the spirits of our warrior ancestors. They send signs to our medicine cats, and when a cat dies they go to join them.”

Splash blinked. “That sounds just like the Tribe of Endless Hunting. Are they the same cats?”

“I don’t think so,” Dovewing meowed. “And among the Clans, StarClan doesn’t exactly choose the new leader. They give nine lives to the leader the Clan chooses.”

“Well, it doesn’t work like that for us,” Splash argued, sounding defensive again. “Stoneteller will look after us. He always has.” Glancing around, she spotted a bunch of feathers lying on the snow. “Oh, look! The kits will love those,” she mewed, darting away.

She doesn’t want to talk about Stoneteller, Dovewing thought as she watched her go. But it’s clear that she’s terrified of what will happen to the Tribe if he doesn’t choose a successor.