The Darkest Hour Read online

  “You shouldn’t talk like that about an elder,” Firestar rebuked her. “Smallear’s given good service to the Clan and we should respect that.”

  “What about a bit of respect for me?” Tawnypaw was so furious she seemed to have forgotten she was talking to her leader. “Just because I was a little late going to clear out the old bedding, Smallear said that Tigerstar had never wanted to serve the elders either, and he could see I was going to turn out just like my father.” She scraped her claws on the sandy floor of the clearing as if she were picturing the old tom’s fur. “It’s not the first time he’s said things, either. I don’t see why I should have to put up with it!”

  While she was speaking, Bramblepaw had come to join them, putting down the moss he was carrying. “You know Smallear’s joints are aching because of the cold weather,” he meowed.

  “You’re not my mentor!” Tawnypaw flared up at her brother. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Calm down, Tawnypaw,” Firestar mewed. He wanted to reassure her that no cat believed she would end up a murderer and traitor like her father, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true. “You’re doing very well as an apprentice, and you’re going to make a great warrior. Sooner or later the Clan will see that.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Bramblepaw meowed, and added to his sister, “We’ve got to live down what Tigerstar did. That’s the only way the Clan will believe in our loyalty.”

  “Some cats believe in it already,” Graystripe put in, and Bramblepaw flashed him a grateful glance.

  The worst of Tawnypaw’s fury was fading, though her amber eyes still burned. With a toss of her head she turned away, flinging her parting words over her shoulder as she stalked toward the gorse tunnel. “I’m going to fetch some fresh moss.”

  “I’m sorry, Firestar,” Bramblepaw murmured when she had gone. “But Tawnypaw’s right to be upset.”

  “I know,” Firestar reassured him. “If I can catch Smallear at a good moment, I’ll have a word with him.”

  “Thanks, Firestar.” Bramblepaw dipped his head in gratitude, picked up his moss, and hurried after his sister.

  Firestar gazed worriedly after the two apprentices. He must talk to Smallear, he decided, and soon. Constantly taunting the young cats about their parent age was not the way to en sure their loyalty to ThunderClan.

  Realising that Graystripe was still waiting patiently beside him, he mewed, “Okay, tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “It’s my kits,” Graystripe confessed. “Ever since the Gathering, I can’t get them out of my mind. Mistyfoot and Stonefur weren’t there, so I couldn’t ask them for news, but now that Tigerstar has essentially taken over RiverClan, I’m sure my kits are in danger.”

  Firestar took a bite of vole and chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t see why they should be at risk more than any other cat,” he replied, swallowing his mouthful. “Tigerstar will want to look after all the apprentices to guarantee a strong fighting force.”

  Graystripe didn’t look reassured. “But Tigerstar knows who their father is,” he pointed out. “He hates me, and I’m worried that he’ll take it out on Featherpaw and Stormpaw.”

  Firestar realized that Graystripe had a fair point about Tigerstar’s hostility. “What would you like to do?”

  Graystripe blinked nervously. “I want you to come with me across the river and bring them back to ThunderClan.”

  Firestar stared at his friend. “Are you completely mouse-brained? You’re asking your Clan leader to stroll into RiverClan territory and steal a couple of apprentices?”

  Graystripe scraped his forepaw on the ground. “Well, if you put it like that…”

  “How else would you put it?” Firestar tried to control his shock, but Graystripe’s suggestion was too close to Brokentail’s old crime of stealing kits. If Firestar agreed and RiverClan found out about it, they would be justified in attacking ThunderClan. And with ShadowClan to help them, that was a risk Firestar couldn’t take.

  “I knew you wouldn’t listen.” Graystripe turned and began to retreat, his tail drooping.

  “I am listening. Graystripe, come back and let’s think about this.” As Graystripe stopped, Firestar went on: “You don’t know that Featherpaw and Stormpaw are in danger. And they’re apprentices now, not kits. They have the right to decide their own future. What if they want to stay in RiverClan?”

  “I know.” Graystripe sounded despairing. “Don’t worry, Firestar. I understand there’s nothing you can do to help.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Against all his better judgment, Firestar knew he couldn’t stand by and do nothing to help his friend. Graystripe pricked his ears, half-hopeful, as Firestar went on: “Suppose we go over there quietly, just the two of us, and check on them? If they’re okay, then you won’t need to worry any more. If they’re not, I’ll tell them there’s a place for them in ThunderClan, if that’s what they choose.”

  Graystripe’s yellow eyes had begun to glow as Firestar spoke. “That’s great!” he meowed. “Thanks, Firestar. Can we go now?”

  “If you like. Let me finish this vole first. You find Whitestorm and tell him he’s in charge of the camp. But don’t tell him where we’re going,” he added quickly.

  Graystripe bounded off to the warriors’ den while Firestar swallowed the last few gulps of vole and swiped his tongue over his mouth. By the time he had finished, Graystripe had reappeared and the two friends headed for the mouth of the gorse tunnel.

  Reaching it, however, they stopped short as a familiar black shape slipped into the clearing.

  “Ravenpaw!” Firestar exclaimed happily. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Ravenpaw responded, touching noses in greeting with Firestar and then with Graystripe. “Graystripe, I haven’t seen you in moons! How are you?”

  “I’m fine. It’s easy to see you’re doing well,” he added, eyeing Ravenpaw’s glossy black pelt.

  “I came to pay my respects to Bluestar,” Ravenpaw explained. “You remember, Firestar, you said I could.”

  “Yes, of course.” Firestar glanced at Graystripe, whose paws were working urgently in his haste to be off. “Ravenpaw, can you go and find Cinderpelt? She’ll show you the place where Bluestar is buried. Graystripe and I are just off on a mission.”

  “That sounds like the old days!” meowed Ravenpaw, half enviously. “What is it this time?”

  “We’re going over to RiverClan to check on my kits,” Graystripe told him in a rush. “I’m worried about them, now that Tigerstar is taking over.”

  Ravenpaw’s shocked look reminded Firestar that he knew nothing of the recent developments in the forest. Rapidly he told the black cat what Tigerstar had announced at the last Gathering.

  “But that’s a disaster!” Ravenpaw hissed when he had finished. “Is there anything I can do to help? I could come with you.”

  His eyes were gleaming. Firestar guessed Ravenpaw was excited by the prospect of adventure. How different he was now from the nervous apprentice he had once been, bullied by his fierce mentor, Tigerclaw!

  “All right,” he meowed, trusting his instincts that it would be good to have Ravenpaw with them. “We’ll be glad to have you.”

  As he bounded through the forest, his two oldest friends by his side, Firestar felt his mind flood with memories of how they had trained and hunted together as apprentices. For a short time he could almost imagine that those days had returned, that he had shed his responsibilities like falling leaves and was young and carefree again.

  But he knew that this was impossible. He was Clan leader now, and he could never escape from his duty to the cats who depended on him.

  The sun had gone down by the time that Firestar and his friends reached the edge of the forest. Warning Graystripe and Ravenpaw to stay back, Firestar crept through the undergrowth until he could look out over the river.

  In front of him lay the stepping-stones, the easiest route into RiverClan territory. As Firestar
peered at the cold, gray water, he caught a strong scent of cats—RiverClan and ShadowClan mixed. A patrol was making its way along the opposite bank. They were too far away for Firestar to be sure which cats they were, but he could not see the blue-gray pelts of Mistyfoot and Stonefur.

  He felt a pang of disappointment. If either of their friends had been near the border, Graystripe could have asked them for news and the matter could have ended there. Now they would have to go right into RiverClan territory.

  Firestar knew he was risking everything on slipping in and slipping out again quietly, unobserved. If it was ever found out that a Clan leader had trespassed on another Clan’s territory, he would be in trouble. But he knew that he had to do it for Graystripe.

  The gray warrior had crept up beside him. “What’s the matter?” he whispered. “Why are we waiting here?”

  Firestar angled his ears toward the patrol. A moment later they disappeared into a reed bed and their scent slowly faded.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Firestar meowed.

  Leading the way, he leaped from one stepping-stone to another across the black, swiftly flowing water. He thought back to the floods of last leaf-bare, when he and Graystripe had almost drowned saving the lives of two of Mistyfoot’s kits. Leopardstar had conveniently forgotten that now, Firestar realized, as well as how the two ThunderClan warriors had helped the starving cats of RiverClan by taking them fresh-kill from their own hunting grounds.

  But there was no point in thinking about that now. Reaching the far bank, Firestar slid into the shelter of a clump of reeds and checked once again that no enemy cats were near. All he could scent was the traces of the patrol, steadily growing fainter.

  Treading softly, he made his way upriver toward the RiverClan camp. Graystripe and Ravenpaw followed, silent as shadows.

  Suddenly a new scent drifted on the breeze. Firestar paused, his whiskers twitching. His eyes widened as he recognized the reek of carrion, crowfood that had rotted for days until its foul stench poisoned the air.

  “Ugh! What’s that?” growled Ravenpaw, forgetting the need for silence.

  Firestar swallowed the bile that rose into his throat. “I don’t know. I’d say it was a foxhole, but there’s no scent of fox.”

  “It stinks, whatever it is,” Graystripe muttered. “Come on, Firestar, we need to keep going before some cat catches us.”

  “No,” Firestar meowed. “I know you’re worried about your kits, Graystripe, but this is too strange. We have to investigate.”

  A few tail-lengths ahead, a tiny stream flowed sluggishly into the main river. Firestar turned to follow it through more reeds. The stench grew stronger, and beneath the smell of crowfood he began to pick up the scent of many cats, a mixture of ShadowClan and RiverClan like the patrol. He halted and signaled for his friends to do the same as he began to make out noises from somewhere ahead: movement in the reeds and the voices of cats mingling together.

  “What is this?” Graystripe whispered. “We’re nowhere near the camp.”

  Firestar flicked the tip of his tail for silence. At least the stench would mask their ThunderClan scent and make it easier for them to stay hidden.

  More cautiously than ever Firestar crept on again until the reeds began to thin out and he came to the edge of a clearing. Flattening himself against the damp ground he crawled as far forward as he dared and looked out.

  At once he had to clamp his teeth hard to keep back a yowl of shock and anger. The stream ran along one side of the clearing, its near-stagnant waters clogged by the remains of fresh-kill carelessly flung there and left to rot. Cats crouched on the bank, tearing at prey. But that was not what had roused Firestar’s fury.

  Opposite his hiding place, on the far side of the clearing was a vast hill of bones. They gleamed like stripped branches in the last of the watery daylight, some tiny shrew bones hardly bigger than teeth, others as big as the leg bone of a fox or a badger.

  Icy trembling seized Firestar’s body. For a heartbeat he thought he was back in his dream at Fourtrees. He remembered the blood that had come oozing out of that hill of bones, and longed to flee in terror. But this was far worse than the dream because Firestar knew that it was happening now, in the real world. And crouched on top of the pile, his fur black against the sun-bleached remains, was Tigerstar, leader of the new united Clan.

  Firestar forced himself to stay hidden. He had to find out what Tigerstar was doing. Graystripe and Ravenpaw crept forward to crouch beside him. Ravenpaw’s fur bristled, and Graystripe looked as if he were going to be sick.

  After the first shock ebbed, Firestar examined the scene more closely. The hill was made up of only prey bones, not mixed with cat bones like the one in his dream. On one side of it stood the ShadowClan deputy, Blackfoot. On the other side was Leopardstar. Her gaze flicked nervously back and forth across the clearing. Firestar wondered if she regretted what had happened to her Clan, and he guessed that her ambition to make her Clan strong had blinded her to Tigerstar’s real nature. But whatever the former RiverClan leader felt, it was too late for her to go back now.

  “I can’t see my kits,” Graystripe whispered, a breath of sound close to Firestar’s ear.

  Mistyfoot and Stonefur weren’t there either, Firestar realized. In fact, most of the cats in the clearing came from ShadowClan, though he spotted the RiverClan warriors Mudfur and Heavystep. There was no sign of either medicine cat, and Firestar wondered if that was significant.

  He was still watching, too stunned to know what to do next, when Tigerstar rose to his paws. A few small bones rattled down the side of the hill. The dark tabby’s eyes blazed in the fading light as he let out a triumphant yowl.

  “Cats of TigerClan, gather here around the Bonehill for a Clan meeting!”

  Immediately the cats in the clearing approached the hill, crouching low in respect. Others appeared from the reeds.

  “He must have built that hill to look like the Highrock,” Ravenpaw murmured. “So he can look down on his Clan.”

  The dark tabby waited until his warriors were all in place and then announced, “It is time for the trial to begin. Fetch the prisoners!”

  Firestar exchanged a bewildered look with Graystripe. Where had Tigerstar found prisoners? Had he already mounted an attack on WindClan?

  At Tigerstar’s order, a ShadowClan warrior—Jaggedtooth, who had been one of Brokentail’s rogues—vanished into the reeds. He returned a few moments later dragging another cat with him. At first Firestar did not recognize the skinny gray warrior, his fur unkempt and one ear shredded and bleeding. Then, as Jaggedtooth pushed him into the circle of cats beneath the Bonehill, Firestar realized it was Stonefur.

  Firestar felt Graystripe stiffen beside him, and put out a warning paw for his friend not to give them away. Graystripe’s ears twitched but he stayed still and silent, watching.

  The reeds parted again. This time Firestar knew at once the cat who stepped into the clearing, his fur sleek and his head raised proudly. It was Darkstripe. Traitor! Firestar thought, his belly clenching in anger.

  More movement in the reeds heralded the arrival of another ShadowClan warrior who was shepherding two smaller cats, one a silver-gray tabby and the other with thick, gray fur. They were as thin as Stonefur, their steps unsteady as they staggered into the clearing. Huddling together in the shadow of the Bonehill, they looked around them with wide, scared eyes.

  An icy chill gripped Firestar’s muscles. The two young cats were Graystripe’s kits, Featherpaw and Stormpaw.

  CHAPTER 15

  Graystripe growled deep in his throat and gathered himself to spring.

  “No!” Firestar gasped, leaping on his friend before he could leave the shadow of the reeds. “If Tigerstar sees us, we’re crowfood!”

  On Graystripe’s other side Ravenpaw grabbed him by one shoulder. “Firestar’s right,” he hissed. “What chance would we have against all these cats?”

  Graystripe writhed desperately, as if he hadn’t heard. “Let me go!
” he snarled. “I’ll flay that piece of fox dung! I’ll rip his heart out!”

  “No!” Firestar repeated in an agonized whisper. “We’ll be slaughtered if we show ourselves now. We won’t leave your kits, Graystripe, I promise we won’t, but we’ve got to wait for the right moment to rescue them.”

  Graystripe went on struggling for a moment longer, then subsided with a grunt of agreement. Firestar let him go, nodding to Ravenpaw to do the same.

  “Listen,” he murmured. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”

  While they had been holding Graystripe down, Tigerstar had begun to speak, his voice drowning the noise of their scuffle among the reeds.

  “Cats of TigerClan,” he began, “you all know the hardships that we have to face. The cold of leaf-bare threatens us. Twolegs threaten us. The other two Clans in the forest, who have not yet realized the wisdom of joining with TigerClan, are a threat to us.”

  Firestar’s tail-tip twitched in anger and he flashed a look at Graystripe. Tigerstar was the threat! All that ThunderClan and WindClan wanted was to get on with their lives in peace, according to the ancient traditions of StarClan and the warrior code.

  But Graystripe’s burning gaze was fixed on his two kits, cowering at the base of the Bonehill; he was unaware of Firestar’s glance.

  “Surrounded as we are by enemies,” Tigerstar went on, “we must be sure of the loyalty of our own warriors. There is no room in TigerClan for the halfhearted. No room for cats who might waver in battle, or worse still, turn on their own Clan mates. TigerClan will not tolerate traitors!”

  Except the traitor who leads it, Firestar thought. Or Darkstripe, who would have watched his own Clan be devoured by dogs.

  The cats in the clearing broke out into yowls of agreement. Tigerstar allowed the clamor to continue for a moment before signaling with his tail for silence. The noise died and he began to speak again.

  “Especially we will not tolerate the abomination of half-Clan cats. No loyal warrior would ever take a mate from another Clan, diluting the pure blood that our warrior ancestors decreed for us. Bluestar and Graystripe of ThunderClan both flouted the warrior code when they took mates from RiverClan. The kits of such a union, like the ones you see in front of you now, can never be trusted.”