The Fourth Apprentice

Chapter 16

Lionblaze heard panic in his apprentice’s wail and saw the fear in her eyes. Quietly he padded over to her and rested his tail on her shoulders. “Calm down,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay.”

Rippletail was looking around. “Water doesn’t run uphill,” the RiverClan cat meowed, “so the stream must be somewhere over there.” He pointed with his tail to a line of long grass at the bottom of a green slope.

“Let’s check it out,” Toadfoot suggested.

He let Rippletail take the lead as the cats trotted in single file alongside the silver fence. Before they had covered many fox-lengths, Lionblaze heard loud Twoleg voices coming from the other side of the field. A group of Twoleg kits erupted into the open, shouting noisily and kicking what looked like a smooth, round boulder with their hind paws.

“Hurry!” he called to his companions as the young Twolegs ran across the grass toward them.

Every cat picked up the pace until they were racing with their tails streaming out. Lionblaze felt the ground shake under his paws as the young Twolegs came nearer, still yowling and kicking the boulder-thing back and forth between them. With a gasp of relief he plunged into the cover of the long grass at the bottom of the slope, but his gasp changed to a screech of alarm as the ground gave way under his paws. He rolled and bumped down a shallow cliff, paws and tail thrashing, and landed with a thump on hard, pebble-strewn earth.

“It’s the stream!” Petalfur mewed.

Dazed, Lionblaze sat up and looked around. He was back in the dry streambed, with overhanging grasses almost meeting above his head. His companions were scattered beside him, picking themselves up and examining scraped pads and snagged fur.

“I’ve swallowed every piece of the grit in this stream!” Tigerheart complained, spitting.

“No, you haven’t,” Toadfoot growled, giving his pelt a shake. “It’s all over my fur!”

Lionblaze spotted Dovepaw crouching beside a jutting rock, her eyes glazed with fear. “I should have heard the Twolegs coming!” she whispered. “I should have known what was going to happen and warned you.”

Lionblaze glanced over his shoulder at the other cats, who were getting ready to move off again. “Dovepaw has some gravel in her pad,” he called. “We need to lick it out; we’ll be with you in a couple of heartbeats.”

Then he leaned over Dovepaw so that no other cat could hear what he was saying. “You’re not responsible for all of us. You’re on this mission because you were the first to sense the brown animals blocking the stream, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t hear and see things and protect ourselves.”

Dovepaw blinked up at him unhappily. “I hate it here, so close to the Twolegplace,” she murmured. “It’s too much—all the sounds and scents and images in my head. I can’t cope with it! I can only concentrate on what is close by.” Her eyes widened into huge pools of misery. “It’s like being blind!”

Lionblaze bent his head and touched his nose to her ear in a gesture of comfort. At the same time he pushed away a stab of worry that Dovepaw had needed to block out so much to cope with the stress of being in a strange territory. He realized how much he had been depending on her to tell them what was up ahead.

We’ll be fine without her powers, he reassured himself. After all, other cats have made journeys with just their ordinary senses.

“It’ll be okay,” he mewed. “At least we’ve found the stream again.” He could still hear the noise of Twolegs beyond the tall grass, their loud voices interspersed with thumps of the smooth boulder-thing.

“That can’t possibly be a rock,” Sedgewhisker observed, her ears quivering. “They would break their paws if it was.”

Just as she finished speaking, the boulder crashed into the long grass ahead of them and lodged at the very edge of the bank. Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker darted forward to take a look at it.

“Be careful!” Whitetail and Toadfoot called out in the same heartbeat, then gave each other an embarrassed glance.

The two younger warriors didn’t take any notice. Tigerheart scrambled up the side of the streambed and gave the boulder a nudge with his nose.

“It’s not a rock!” he meowed in surprise. “Look!” He gave the boulder another nudge and it bounced away from him, lighter than a twig.

“Mouse-brain!” Lionblaze hissed. He ran forward and gave the boulder a harder shove, sending it farther off. “Keep away,” he warned Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker. “It’s a Twoleg thing!”

Before the three cats could hide in the streambed again, one of the young Twolegs came blundering through the long grass, yowling to his companions. Lionblaze guessed that he was looking for the round thing.

“Hide!” he hissed. “Keep down!”

He crouched down beside Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker, feeling very exposed with only the grass stems to hide him. Tigerheart was tense with alarm, but Sedgewhisker seemed perfectly comfortable, keeping still and silent, not even blinking, as her gaze followed the young Twoleg.

That figures, Lionblaze thought. WindClan cats are used to hunting without ground cover.

Several moons seemed to pass before the Twoleg found the round thing and ran off with it. Gradually the noise from the Twolegs died away. The three cats slid down into the stream again; Toadfoot was waiting for his Clanmate with his neck fur bristling.

“Are you completely mouse-brained?” he demanded. “Do you want Twolegs to catch you?”

“Sorry,” Tigerheart mumbled.

Whitetail glared at Sedgewhisker, who ducked her head apologetically.

“Let’s get a move on,” Toadfoot meowed. “We’ve wasted enough time here.” He set off at a run, glancing back to add, “The brown animals won’t be anywhere around here, right?”

“Er…right,” Dovepaw stammered.

The stream skirted the green expanse where the Twolegs were playing, then ran between rows of Twoleg nests, with neat patches of grass that stretched down to the bank. Trees overhung the channel; Lionblaze was thankful for the shade and the cover, especially when he heard the yowls of young Twolegs coming from their nests.

Popping his head up above the bank from time to time, he spotted Twoleg kits chasing one another or kicking more of the smooth, round things. Once he saw a young Twoleg screeching happily as it swung from a tree on a piece of wood suspended between two long tendrils.

“What do you think that is?” he asked Whitetail, who had climbed up beside him.

“I have no idea.” The WindClan she-cat shrugged. “Whatever it is, the kit is having fun.”

Sunhigh came and went as the cats padded onward up the stream. Lionblaze’s belly began to rumble; it seemed a long time since their fresh-kill in the early morning. Whitetail and Sedgewhisker seemed excited by something; their ears were pricked and their whiskers quivered, and they kept whispering to each other.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

Sedgewhisker turned to him, her eyes glowing. “We can scent rabbits!”

“What?” Toadfoot halted with a scornful flick of his tail. “Have you got bees in your brain? Rabbits wouldn’t live this close to Twolegs.”

“Yeah, the Twolegs would probably hunt them,” Tigerheart added.

“There are rabbits,” Whitetail insisted, giving the ShadowClan cats a withering glare. “And not far away, either.” She began stalking up the streambed, nostrils twitching; Sedgewhisker padded at her shoulder.

Lionblaze turned to Dovepaw. “Are they right?”

To his disappointment, his apprentice just gave a shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve still got my senses blocked,” she muttered. She looked up at him with a fierce glare. “I can’t help it, okay? There’s just too much noise to cope with!”

“Okay,” Lionblaze soothed before the other cats wondered what they were talking about.

Suddenly Whitetail streaked away with Sedgewhisker hard on her paws. The WindClan warriors shot up the side of the bank and vanished through the thick grass that bordered the stream.

“Fox dung!” Toadfoot hissed, heading after them.

Lionblaze and the other cats followed, then stopped dead as they reached the top of the bank and peered through the clumps of grass.

“There is a rabbit!” Petalfur breathed. “Two rabbits!”

Water flooded Lionblaze’s jaws as he eyed the creatures: They were young and plump, with thick black-and-white pelts. They sat nibbling on the patch of grass that stretched as far as the Twoleg nest, quite unaware that hunters were nearby. For some reason they were surrounded by a fence of shiny Twoleg stuff, but it was low enough for a cat to scramble over easily.

Whitetail and Sedgewhisker were already crouched on the grass, ready to spring; Lionblaze flattened himself to the ground and crept up to join them, aware of Toadfoot just behind him and the rest of the patrol fanning out to intercept any rabbit that might make a dash for safety. He saw Whitetail bunch her muscles to leap over the fence. A heartbeat later she froze as a loud yowl came from a tree a few tail-lengths away.

“Hey! You! Hold it right there!”

Lionblaze stared in astonishment as three kittypets leaped down from the tree and raced across the grass to stand between the WindClan cats and the rabbits. In the lead was an orange tom with glaring yellow eyes, followed by a small white she-cat and a fat black-and-brown tabby tom.

The orange tom planted himself right in front of Whitetail; his two companions stood just behind him. They both looked terrified, their fur fluffed out and their ears flattened.

“You can’t hunt these rabbits,” the orange tom declared, baring his teeth in the beginnings of a snarl.

“Oh, yeah?” Sedgewhisker rose from her hunter’s crouch to stand nose to nose with the kittypet. “We’ll fight you for them, if that’s what you want. You should lay more scent markers if you want cats to stay out of your territory!”

“Territory?” The white she-cat sounded confused. “What are you meowing about?”

“Territory!” Toadfoot snarled, padding up to stand beside Sedgewhisker. “Don’t pretend you’re so dumb that you don’t know what territory is.”

“This is my housefolk’s nest,” the black-and-brown tom mewed.

“But the rabbits aren’t in the nest, are they?” Whitetail sounded as if she was talking to particularly stupid kits. “Unless this territory is scent-marked, they’re free for any cat to hunt.”

“No, they’re not,” the orange tom insisted, his neck fur bristling up.

Tigerheart narrowed his eyes. “Look, kittypet—”

“This is ridiculous,” Sedgewhisker interrupted impatiently. “There are two perfectly good rabbits waiting to be caught, and all we can do is argue. Are you hunting them?” she asked the kittypets. “Because—”

All three kittypets let out gasps of horror, their eyes stretched wide.

“No!” the tabby tom exclaimed. “Those rabbits belong to my housefolk.”

“We would be in big trouble if we hunted them,” the orange tom added.

“That’s right,” the white she-cat meowed. “Every cat around here knows about the tom who hunted his housefolk’s rabbit.” Her voice grew hushed. “They took him to the Cutter, and he was never the same afterward.”

Lionblaze and the other Clan cats exchanged puzzled glances. “Now I’ve heard everything,” Rippletail remarked. “Kittypets guarding Twoleg rabbits!”

“So what?” Toadfoot growled. “I’m going to get the rabbits anyway. They look fat and slow enough for any cat to catch, not just WindClan.”

He hurled himself at the shiny fence and started to claw his way up it. Immediately the orange tom grabbed Toadfoot’s tail in his teeth and yanked him down again.

Toadfoot scrambled to his paws and spun around, claws extended. “Back off, kittypet!” he spat. “Do you think I’ll let you stop me?”

“No.” Lionblaze shouldered his way between the two cats. “We’ll look elsewhere for prey.”

“Right.” Whitetail sounded disappointed, but her voice was firm. “These rabbits are too well protected. We can’t risk getting injured now.”

Toadfoot went on glaring at the orange tom for a heartbeat longer, then shrugged angrily and turned away. The three kittypets stood in front of the fence and watched as the Clan cats padded across the grass and toward the streambed.

Even though Lionblaze had prevented the fight, he was still finding it hard to control his anger. What a waste of rabbits. We could all have had a good meal.

“Those kittypets think they’ve won!” Toadfoot exclaimed. He cast a last glance over his shoulder before he leaped back into the stream. “Look at them! I’d like to wipe those smug looks off their faces.”

“But Whitetail’s right: We can’t,” Petalfur reminded him. “We have to stay safe until we find the water.”

“Right,” Toadfoot muttered darkly. “But just wait till we’re on the way back…”

The patrol continued in silence until they left the Twoleg nests behind. The gardens gave way to a prickly copse with young trees poking out of a tangle of undergrowth.

“I think we should stop here and find something to eat,” Rippletail suggested.

Lionblaze could see that he and Petalfur were looking dull-eyed with exhaustion again. “Good idea,” he agreed, seeing Toadfoot curl his lip in frustration. “We don’t know when there’ll be another chance.”

The ShadowClan warrior let out an exaggerated sigh. “All right, let’s get it over with. And let’s hope we don’t have any more dumb kittypets getting in our way.”

Dovepaw’s tail shot up. “I can hear a bird over there,” she murmured to Lionblaze, angling her ears toward the other side of the copse. “It’s banging a snail against a stone.”

Lionblaze listened, but he couldn’t hear a thing. “Go for it,” he meowed, pleased that his apprentice was managing to use her extra-keen senses again.

Dovepaw scampered off happily, while Lionblaze stood for a moment tasting the air until he detected a squirrel near the top of a nearby tree. Swarming up the trunk, he had reached the branch underneath his quarry when a loud meow rang out from the ground below.

“Hello again!”

The squirrel sat straight up, startled, then bolted, hurling itself into the air and vanishing into the foliage of the next tree. Lionblaze let out an exasperated snort. Looking down, he spotted the white she-cat from the Twoleg nest with rabbits; she stood at the foot of his tree, gazing up at him with friendly green eyes.

“You just scared off my next meal,” Lionblaze complained, scrambling down to join her.

“Sorry.” The white kittypet blinked at him. “I just wanted to watch you hunting. I figured you’d stop here, since you tried to get those rabbits. Do you really have to feed yourselves? We sometimes catch mice, but it’s not like we have to. I mean, who’d want to eat fur and bones?”

Plenty of cats, Lionblaze thought when the kittypet paused for breath. Could she truly be that clueless? Spotting another squirrel at the edge of a bramble thicket, he gave her a quick nod of farewell and stalked off after it.

But the white she-cat followed him. “Are you hunting that squirrel?” she asked. “Can I watch? I’ll be quiet.”

Too late! Lionblaze groaned as the squirrel’s ears pricked; it leaped up the nearest tree to sit and chatter angrily at them from a low branch before disappearing.

“My name’s Snowdrop,” the white cat gabbled on, oblivious of what she had done. “The orange tom is called Seville, and the black-and-brown tabby is Jigsaw. Thanks for leaving the rabbits alone. It’s true about what happened to that other cat, the one who ate his housefolk’s rabbit.”

Lionblaze took a deep breath and turned to face her. “It’s nice to chat and all,” he mewed through gritted teeth, “but I’m kind of busy.”

He could have saved his breath; he could see Snowdrop wouldn’t have recognized a hint if it hit her over the head.

“What are you all doing here?” she meowed, peering through the trees at the other cats who were stalking their prey in peace. “Have you run away from your housefolk? Did you get lost? Are you looking for the way home?”

Lionblaze raised his tail in an effort to stem the flood of questions. “No, we’re not kittypets,” he meowed, trying not to feel offended. “We live in Clans, by a lake downstream from here.”

“Clans?” Snowdrop sounded bewildered.

“A whole bunch of cats who live together,” Lionblaze explained. “We have a leader—”

“What’s all this racket about?” Fronds of bracken parted to reveal Toadfoot, his fur bristling in annoyance. He dropped the mouse he was carrying. “For StarClan’s sake, you’re making enough noise to scare away all the prey between here and the lake.”

“Hello.” Snowdrop seemed quite unworried by the ShadowClan cat’s bad temper. “My name’s Snowdrop. What’s yours?”

Toadfoot exchanged a surprised glance with Lionblaze. “Never mind that,” he mewed briskly to Snowdrop. “We’re on a mission, and you can’t help us, so please leave us alone.”

Snowdrop’s eyes stretched wide. “Oh, wow, a mission!”

“We’re looking for the water,” Lionblaze explained as the rest of his patrol padded up to find out what was going on. Dovepaw brought her thrush, and Rippletail proudly deposited a vole beside it. “We think there are some brown animals blocking the stream.”

“Oh, really? I’ve often wondered what happened,” Snowdrop chirped. “I used to like the stream. It was good to lie on the grass and watch the insects buzzing over the water.”

Toadfoot rolled his eyes.

“Can I come with you?” Snowdrop mewed suddenly. “It would be fun! Maybe the brown animals are dogs—do you think so? Or giant rabbits!”

“No, sorry, you can’t come,” Rippletail meowed. “You wouldn’t be able to look after yourself.”

Snowdrop’s gaze fell on the few pieces of fresh-kill the Clan cats had managed to catch. “You don’t seem to be too good at that yourselves,” she commented.

“We’re fine,” Rippletail replied. “Now run back to your housefolk.”

Toadfoot waved his tail for the patrol to move off. “We’ll eat later,” he growled.

Whitetail grabbed Dovepaw’s thrush while Petalfur picked up the mouse and Lionblaze took the vole. Before jumping into the stream again, he glanced back to see Snowdrop sitting where they had left her, watching them go. Her head was drooping unhappily.

Feeling guilty for abandoning her, Lionblaze darted back. “Here, would you like a bite of vole?” he offered, dropping it at her paws.

Snowdrop’s gaze filled with horror. “With fur and everything? No way!”

Lionblaze heard snorts of amusement coming from his companions. “Okay, bye then,” he mewed hurriedly and ran off to join them, remembering at the last moment to take the vole with him.

The sun had gone down by the time the patrol set out again. In the twilight they came to a steep-sided valley where the trees were much older, with spreading trunks and gnarled branches. Whitetail, scouting ahead, found a split in a huge hollow tree, the floor covered in a thick layer of dead leaves, where there was room for all of them to curl up and sleep.

“Well done!” Lionblaze yawned. “We’ll be safe in here from anything.”

He still thought it best to set up a lookout; exhausted from the night before, when he had taken Dovepaw’s shift as well as his own, he didn’t argue when Rippletail volunteered to take the first watch. He crawled inside the tree, noticing that no cat seemed to be particularly bothered now about whose pelt they brushed against as they lay down, and curled up gratefully beside Dovepaw. He was asleep within moments.

After what felt like just a heartbeat, Lionblaze was awakened by a prodding in his ribs. Moonlight trickling through the split in the trunk revealed Dovepaw looking down at him, her eyes shining.

“What’s the matter?” he muttered.

“I can hear the brown animals!” Dovepaw told him, twitching her tail with excitement. “We’re nearly there!”