Outcast Page 13

  “Ready?” Brambleclaw asked.

  “Yes, ready,” Stormfur replied.

  Jaypaw stood still and let all the scents and sounds of the stone hollow—the herbs from the den he had just left, the milky scents of the nursery and the dusty smell of the ground, the voices of his Clanmates and the rustle of wind in the trees—soak into his pelt.

  What if I never come back? StarClan would have warned me, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that something they do, tell cats when they’re going to die?

  “Jaypaw!” Hollypaw’s voice sounded from the thorn tunnel. “Wake up! Every cat is leaving.”

  Jaypaw jumped. Dashing across the clearing, he followed his sister into the tunnel and out into the forest.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jaypaw could feel dappled sunlight and shade on his pelt as he padded beneath the trees. Lionpaw flanked him on one side, while Hollypaw bounded ahead for a few paw steps, then returned to join her littermates. The air was full of birdsong and the rustling of leaves, and the scents of prey were sharp in the undergrowth.

  The three apprentices brought up the rear of the group of traveling cats. Brambleclaw had taken the lead, with Stormfur and Brook, closely followed by Talon and Night. Just ahead of Jaypaw he could scent Squirrelflight and Tawnypelt.

  “…and Tigerkit has already learned the hunter’s crouch,” Tawnypelt was meowing. “But I think Dawnkit will be the best fighter, if only she listens to what her mentor tells her once she’s apprenticed. Right now she doesn’t listen to any cat.”

  “All kits can be deaf when they choose,” Squirrelflight told her. “They’ll grow into fine warriors, you’ll see.”

  Kits! Jaypaw thought. Boring!

  He angled his ears, trying to pick up more interesting snippets of conversation, but all he could hear was Crowfeather telling Breezepaw about the best way to catch prey in the mountains. The two WindClan cats were padding side by side a few tail-lengths from the rest; Jaypaw could feel Breezepaw’s resentment at being forced to come on the journey. I don’t think he and his father even like each other, Jaypaw decided.

  “Hey, look!” Lionpaw exclaimed. “Bet you I can catch that butterfly!”

  “Bet you can’t,” Hollypaw returned.

  “Just watch!” Lionpaw took off in an enormous leap, then crashed back to the forest floor.

  “Missed it!” Hollypaw let out a mrrow of laughter. “Told you!”

  Jaypaw heard heavier paw steps in the bracken and his mother’s scent drifted over him.

  “Just what do you three think you’re doing?” she scolded them. “Are you kits, let out of camp for the first time? This is a serious journey, and you need to save your strength. You’ll need it later.”

  “Sorry,” Lionpaw muttered.

  Jaypaw drew his lips back in the beginning of a snarl as he imagined Breezepaw’s smug expression; he knew the WindClan apprentice was listening.

  If he says one word, I’ll claw his ear off!

  But Breezepaw had the sense to keep his jaws shut.

  Soon Jaypaw began to pick up the clean scent of water. Stronger sunlight on his pelt told him they had left the shelter of the trees. He realized they had emerged beside the lake, and for a moment his paws itched to search for the stick with the marks Rock had made. But he couldn’t carry the stick all the way to the mountains.

  I’ll have to leave it behind. But I’m not leaving you behind, Rock. When I get to the mountains, I know I’ll find you there.

  “We’re near the WindClan border,” Hollypaw whispered into his ear. “We have to cross the stream.”

  For a couple of heartbeats Jaypaw froze, remembering the smothering water in the tunnels. He hated getting his paws wet!

  Lionpaw butted him gently in the shoulder. “It’ll be okay. The water’s really shallow.”

  Jaypaw bit back an indignant retort, though it was really himself he was angry with. Would he always have to fight this terror of drowning?

  He could hear splashing as the other cats crossed the stream. Hollypaw guided him to the bank with her tail across his shoulders. Jaypaw tensed when he felt the current swirling around his paws. The stream bed shelved down until the water brushed his belly fur. He could feel Hollypaw and Lionpaw close on either side; Lionpaw murmured, “This way a bit; there’s a deeper place just there.” Then the stream grew shallower again, and Jaypaw could scramble up the bank on the other side. He halted a tail-length away and shook himself to hide his tremors of relief.

  “Hey, do you mind?” Breezepaw’s unfriendly voice came from just behind him. “You’re making my fur wet!”

  “Sor-ree,” Jaypaw muttered.

  The cats continued along the lakeshore, across WindClan territory and past the horseplace. Jaypaw could just pick up the scent of the horseplace cats beneath the overwhelming scent of horse, but neither Smoky nor Floss appeared to greet them. He pricked his ears at distant barking and decided that the dog who lived near the horseplace was too far away to be a nuisance.

  Once past the horseplace, Brambleclaw led the way uphill. Jaypaw’s paws tingled as he realized he was setting them down on unfamiliar ground. This was the real beginning of the adventure! The scents of home were fading behind him, and a stiff breeze brought new scents to him, wild and strange. His paws faltered briefly. Stupid cat! he berated himself. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? He felt his littermates’ pelts touching his on either side, and sensed that they too were daunted by the unknown path where they had set their paws.

  The ground underfoot was growing wetter and more uneven. Jaypaw brushed past a clump of reeds and heard a splash accompanied by a strong scent of frog. A moment later, one of his paws slipped on a tussock of wet grass and water surged over his hindquarters.

  “Fox dung!” he spat, clawing with his forepaws to heave himself out again.

  “Are you okay?” Lionpaw asked.

  “Fine.” Jaypaw spoke through gritted teeth.

  Just beyond his brother, he heard Talon murmur to Night, “This is crazy. Taking a blind to-be all the way to the mountains!”

  “I know,” Night replied. “He’ll never keep up.”

  A sharp retort bubbled up inside Jaypaw, but before he could speak he felt his mother’s tail laid firmly over his mouth. “Jaypaw will manage just fine,” she meowed. “He’s as good at tackling new territory as any cat. Have you never put a paw in the wrong place, Talon?” she added.

  When the big Tribe tabby didn’t reply, she moved her tail from Jaypaw’s mouth to his shoulder. “Come this way. It’s drier over here.”

  Jaypaw followed her, thankful to feel more solid ground beneath his paws. He was surprised that Breezepaw hadn’t made some sarcastic comment about his misstep. But Breezepaw was a Clan cat; maybe he felt a kind of loyalty to support any Clan cat against the Tribe.

  Not that he stood up for me, Jaypaw thought sourly. That would be too much to expect.

  Wind buffeted Jaypaw in the face, telling him they had reached the top of the ridge. There were so many new scents that he couldn’t begin to sort them all out.

  “This is awesome!” Hollypaw gasped. “I can see the whole of the lake and all the territories from here.” She bounced up to Jaypaw and gave him a nudge with her head. “Down there is a stream with trees growing around it, where RiverClan has its camp. And beyond that is dark pine forest—that’s ShadowClan’s territory. I can even see the Gathering island, and the tree-bridge…It looks so tiny from up here!”

  “Over this way are the woods where we live.” Lionpaw joined Jaypaw on his other side. “I bet we could see the hollow if we were here in leaf-bare. And then there’s open moorland where WindClan live. We can see everything!”

  “WindClan look at this all the time.” Breezepaw had padded up behind them. “Our territory has loads of great views.”

  Annoying furball, Jaypaw thought.

  “Do you remember the first time we stood here?” Jaypaw scented Brambleclaw a little way away, with Squirrelflight, Crowfeather, and Tawnypelt.
<
br />   “I’ll never forget it,” Squirrelflight replied. “It was night, and all the cats of StarClan were reflected in the lake.”

  “I can’t believe how brave you were,” Night put in. “You traveled so far to find a new home, without even knowing where you were going.”

  “StarClan helped us,” Squirrelflight murmured.

  “And the Tribe of Endless Hunting would do the same for you,” Tawnypelt pointed out, “if the Tribe of Rushing Water ever had to leave the mountains.”

  “Leave?” Night sounded alarmed. “We could never leave and nor could the spirits of our ancestors. We belong too much to the mountains.”

  Jaypaw wasn’t sure she was right. If the Clan cats failed to drive out the intruders, the Tribe, and the spirits of its ancestors, might have to face a journey of their own.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lionpaw stood beside his sister, gazing down at the lake and the familiar Clan territories. A ripple of excitement pulsed through him as he turned his back on his home and saw for the first time a wide stretch of unknown country.

  “What are we waiting for?” he complained to Hollypaw. “Why can’t we keep going?”

  “Didn’t you hear Brambleclaw?” his sister meowed. “He told us all to rest, and he said we could hunt if we want to eat.”

  Lionpaw had been so focused on their journey that he hadn’t noticed his father giving the order. His forepaws tore up the short grass of the ridge. “I don’t want to sit around. We’ve hardly started.”

  “It’s the traveling herbs giving you all that energy,” Hollypaw mewed practically. “The mountains won’t go away.” She turned with a flick of her tail and began to stalk toward a gorse bush, her ears and whiskers alert for signs of prey.

  Lionpaw’s paws were sore from the stiff climb up the ridge, but he had never felt so alive, so eager to keep traveling. In front of him, dark forest covered the downward slope, and beyond it Lionpaw could see flat green stretches like the grass at the horseplace. It was sliced through by Thunderpaths and dotted with Twoleg nests—some of them close together, whole clusters of red stone dens.

  Lionpaw bounded over the short, springy grass to a rocky outcrop, the highest part of the ridge. At the top of the rocks, wind flattened his fur along his sides. He felt as powerful as a warrior of LionClan! If he stretched out a paw, he could blot out whole Twoleg nests. The biggest Thunderpath looked as thin as a strand of bramble or a twig that he could snap with his teeth.

  I could run farther than a hare! I could fight the fiercest fox that ever lived. Spotting the dark gray stain that hovered on the horizon, he added, I could climb the highest mountain faster than an eagle could fly.

  He wondered if the other cats felt like this. When he looked down at his traveling companions dozing peacefully below him, he suspected that they didn’t.

  Lionpaw strained his ears to pick up Tigerstar’s voice in the sighing of the wind and looked for the dark tabby shape in the shadows cast by rocks and bushes. This was exactly how Tigerstar had told him he should feel, as if his enemies were no bigger than beetles. But there was no trace of the former warrior. All these turbulent feelings seemed to come from inside Lionpaw himself.

  “Lionpaw! We’re waiting for you.”

  His father’s voice made him jump. The other cats had finished resting and were getting to their paws.

  “Coming!” he called.

  He leaped down from the outcrop and joined his littermates as the cats began to make their way into the trees. His father and mother took the lead with Tawnypelt and Crowfeather.

  “Remember how we felt when we first climbed up here?” Tawnypelt meowed.

  “I remember how sore my paws were,” Squirrelflight replied with a twitch of her tail.

  Brambleclaw skirted a huge clump of bracken. “Tallpoppy’s kit fell over here. Ferncloud picked her up and carried her. We all helped one another then.”

  “But it can’t be like that anymore.” Lionpaw thought Crowfeather sounded wistful, the familiar edge missing from his voice. “It’s natural for Clans to be rivals.”

  Lionpaw thought sadly about Heatherpaw; he guessed that all four of the senior warriors missed the friendships they had forged on their journeys. He was relieved that they seemed to know the way. Now that he couldn’t see his home anymore he was daunted by the vast stretches of unknown territory. His pelt grew hot with embarrassment when he remembered his dreams of power on the hilltop, and he was thankful that no other cat knew what he’d been thinking.

  Unless Jaypaw knows. Lionpaw’s pelt grew hotter still at the idea that his brother might have been eavesdropping on his thoughts.

  “Come on, pick up your paws,” Brambleclaw called back. “I want to be out of these trees by nightfall.”

  Lionpaw stifled a sigh. His paws were dragging already and his belly was yowling with hunger. The energy from the traveling herbs seemed to have worn off. He wished he’d taken the chance to rest and eat after all.

  “Here.” Squirrelflight’s voice was muffled; Lionpaw glanced back to see her padding up to him with a mouse hanging from her jaws. “Eat as quickly as you can,” she added, dropping her prey at his paws.

  “Thank you!” Lionpaw touched his nose gratefully to his mother’s shoulder.

  “I was tired of listening to your belly growling,” Squirrelflight mewed, her tail curling up in amusement. “I reckon they could hear it back in ThunderClan.”

  She ran ahead to join Brambleclaw, while Lionpaw crouched over the mouse and devoured it in a few famished bites.

  By the time he had finished his companions were out of sight, but he could hear their voices ahead and followed their scent trail until he caught up. Strength had flooded back into his paws. Passing the rest of the group, he bounded up to his father.

  “What do you know about these invading cats?” Brambleclaw was asking Talon. “How many are there?”

  “Too many,” Talon replied.

  Brambleclaw twitched his ears. Lionpaw guessed that he didn’t find the Tribe cat’s answer much use in planning what they would do when they reached the mountains.

  “Well, what have you done so far?” Brambleclaw went on. “Have you worked out their ways of hunting and fighting? And what about regular patrols—”

  “We’re not Clan cats, you know.” Talon’s neck fur bristled. “We need help, but that doesn’t mean we want to be treated like a bunch of to-bes.”

  “Calm down, Talon.” Night touched her Tribemate’s shoulder with the tip of her tail. “Brambleclaw’s only trying to work out the best way of helping us.”

  For a heartbeat Lionpaw thought that the tabby cave-guard would snap at her too, but then his fur lay flat again and he gave Brambleclaw an awkward nod as if he was trying to apologize.

  “We’ve never needed to set boundaries before,” he explained. “We just chose some rocks around our cave and set guards to keep watch for the intruders. Stoneteller said…”

  Growing bored with this talk of strategy, Lionpaw let his father and the others go ahead and waited for his littermates to catch up.

  “The Tribe cats seem really tense,” he meowed as he fell in beside Hollypaw. “I thought Talon was going to claw Brambleclaw’s ear off.”

  Hollypaw blinked thoughtfully. “I think it’s because they never told Stoneteller what they planned to do. He might be angry when a bunch of Clan cats turn up in his territory.”

  “Angry?” Lionpaw’s pelt grew hot with outrage. “He should be grateful to us!”

  His sister let out a snort. “Maybe his pride would be hurt. Leaders ought to be able to deal with problems without asking for help from outside. How do you think Firestar would feel if we were having trouble and you went to ask for help from WindClan?”

  “He would probably line his nest with my pelt,” Lionpaw admitted.

  “So what would you do if you were Stoneteller?” Jaypaw’s voice was curious as he flicked his sister’s shoulder with his tail tip.

  Hollypaw paused for a few heartbea
ts before she replied. “I’d set up border patrols—”

  “But they don’t have borders,” Lionpaw reminded her.

  “Then I’d mark some.” Hollypaw’s ears twitched. “I’d make sure they were patrolled regularly, and I’d teach all my cats to fight. That would keep the intruders out.”

  Jaypaw shook his head. “You’re thinking like a Clan cat. The Tribe’s ways are different. I’m not sure we should try to change them.”

  “We should if they’re being driven out of their territory and starved to death,” Lionpaw argued. “What the Tribe needs is the warrior code, and we’re going to teach it to them!”

  The setting sun cast long shadows in front of them as they came to the edge of the trees. Lionpaw fluffed out his pelt against the breeze that whispered through the undergrowth. Ahead he could see a stretch of dusty grass sloping down into a narrow valley. More trees stretched up the far side, and beyond them hung the gray smudge of the mountains. Over to one side Lionpaw spotted the reddish stone of Twoleg nests, just visible through the trees.

  “We’ll stop here for the night,” Brambleclaw announced. “It’s sheltered, and there’ll be plenty of prey.”

  Before he had finished speaking, Crowfeather broke away from the group, streaking across the open ground with his belly fur brushing the grass. Breezepaw raced after him. Lionpaw didn’t spot the rabbit they were chasing until it broke for cover. The two WindClan cats separated, and as the rabbit dodged away from Crowfeather, it practically threw itself under Breezepaw’s paws. The WindClan apprentice dispatched it with a swift bite to the neck.

  “Great catch!” Lionpaw meowed as he came back dragging his prey.

  Breezepaw ignored him, but Crowfeather gave him a nod as the two WindClan cats settled down to share their prey.

  Lionpaw turned back into the woodland to find some prey of his own. Tasting the air, he found a mouse scrabbling among the debris at the edge of a bramble thicket. He leaped with paws outstretched, but as he sank his claws into the little creature he felt a tendril of bramble wrap itself around his shoulders. He pulled away, leaving a tuft of orange fur behind. His pelt prickled with embarrassment at the clumsy kill, and as he padded back to the edge of the trees with his prey he hoped that Breezepaw hadn’t been watching.