Along with his uneasiness about Darktail, Hawkwing’s mind was full of memories of his brother. Seeing the evidence of the fire wiped away from the Twoleg greenplace had brought all his grief flooding back. In a way, it was like wiping Duskpaw away too.
Is it true, what Sharpclaw said about Darktail? Hawkwing wondered. That I’m trying to make him into my replacement brother? His first instinct was to deny it, but then he asked himself whether it would be such a bad thing if it was true.
Duskpaw is gone, and isn’t ever coming back, he told himself, claws of pain gripping his heart again as he put the thought into words. But cats need other cats in the wild. Surely it’s good that I’ve made new bonds with other cats like Darktail, and . . . and Pebblepaw.
Fresh confusion surged into Hawkwing’s mind as he thought about the young she-cat. He felt as though he was trying to find a path through fog. I hated her not long ago . . . so why am I thinking about her so much now? I blamed her for Duskpaw’s death. Why do I hope she missed me when I was away on the second quest?
“Stop!” Waspwhisker’s urgent hiss broke into Hawkwing’s thoughts. “Lie flat!”
Instantly obeying, Hawkwing flopped to the ground, his Clanmates doing the same around him, and peered out through the long grass. Every hair on his pelt began to bristle as he braced himself for trouble.
Are the raccoons back?
But when Hawkwing tasted the air, the only scent that he could pick up came from cats. Unfamiliar cats. Just ahead he spotted a bank of ferns, their fronds waving as unseen animals pushed their way through.
A heartbeat later the fern fronds parted and a powerful silver-gray tom strode into the opening. A long-furred black she-cat followed him, and behind her was a ginger tom, and two tabby she-cats. Their pelts were ragged, but muscles rippled beneath their ungroomed fur; apprehension fluttered in Hawkwing’s belly as he saw how dangerous they looked.
What are they doing on our territory? he asked himself.
All Hawkwing’s instincts told him to leap out of hiding and challenge the approaching rogues. Instead, he glanced at Waspwhisker. “We should fight them off!” he whispered.
“Wait,” Waspwhisker ordered curtly. Turning to Darktail, he added, “Are these more friends of yours?”
Darktail shook his head, looking mystified. “I’ve never seen any of them before.”
By this time the leading silver-gray tom had drawn level with the clump of long grass where the SkyClan cats were hiding. He halted to sniff the air, and Hawkwing realized he had picked up the Clan cats’ scent.
Before the tom could react, Waspwhisker rose to his paws and faced him. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he demanded.
The silver-gray tom looked Waspwhisker over with insolent green eyes. “Who wants to know?” he asked.
“We do.” Hawkwing rose to stand beside Waspwhisker, while Bellapaw, Darktail, and Sparrowpelt took up positions just behind them.
“And who are you, mange-pelt?” the silver-gray tom sneered, as the rest of the rogues spread out threateningly on either side of him.
“We are cats of SkyClan,” Waspwhisker replied, “and you’re on our territory. It’s time for you to leave. Now.”
“Oh, we’re on their territory!” the black she-cat exclaimed, stretching her eyes wide. “I’m so scared!”
“Are you going to leave or not?” Waspwhisker’s shoulder fur bristled up aggressively.
The silver-gray tom slid out his claws and raised one forepaw to examine them. “I guess . . . not,” he mewed.
“So get out of our way,” one of the tabby she-cats ordered.
Anger flashed in Waspwhisker’s eyes, and he let out a ferocious yowl. “Attack!”
Hawkwing hurled himself at the ginger tom, who was closest to him. His paws splayed out, he landed on the tom’s shoulders and dug his claws in hard. Screeching in fury, the ginger tom let himself drop to the ground and rolled over, crushing Hawkwing beneath him. For a few heartbeats Hawkwing’s nose and mouth were muffled in his enemy’s pelt, so he could hardly breathe. Bringing up his hind legs, he thrust at the ginger tom and managed to throw him off.
“Ugh!” he gasped, spitting out fur. “I’ve got a mouthful of your fleas!”
The ginger tom crouched in front of him, green eyes glaring, his hindquarters waggling, while his tail lashed from side to side. Hawkwing was bracing himself to meet his pounce when he spotted Sparrowpelt behind the ginger tom, struggling with the long-furred black she-cat. The she-cat had Sparrowpelt pinned down, her teeth aiming for his throat.
Bunching his muscles, Hawkwing sprang right over the ginger tom and barreled into the black she-cat, thrusting her away from Sparrowpelt.
The older warrior staggered to his paws. “Thanks!” he panted, and flung himself back into combat, driving the black she-cat backward, paw step by paw step.
Hawkwing glanced around, and spotted Bellapaw chasing one of the tabby she-cats back into the bank of ferns. Waspwhisker and the other tabby she-cat were rolling around on the ground in a snarling tangle of tails and paws.
Then Hawkwing’s eyes widened in amazement as he saw Darktail whirling around the silver-gray tom, darting in to slash at him and immediately leaping back out of range. The tom kept trying to face him and attack, but Darktail was moving so fast that by the time the gray tom managed to strike at him, he had moved on. The tom’s claws barely touched him.
“Flea-pelt! Trespasser!” Darktail yowled. “Get out of here!”
A hard blow caught Hawkwing on the side of the head, driving him off his paws. As he hit the ground a surging darkness covered his vision, and as it cleared he glimpsed green eyes close to his own. A paw clamped down on his neck.
To Hawkwing’s horror he realized that, distracted by Darktail’s skillful battle technique, he had forgotten about the ginger tom. He writhed furiously, desperate to throw off the weight that was holding him down. Twisting his neck, he tried to sink his teeth into the ginger tom’s leg.
Just then, a loud caterwaul sounded in Hawkwing’s ears. “Back off! Run!”
The weight on top of him abruptly vanished. Hauling himself up, Hawkwing saw the two remaining she-cats fleeing for the ferns, with the ginger tom hard on their paws. The silver-gray leader, still yowling his orders to retreat, brought up the rear. Darktail, charging after him, managed to get in a couple of blows on the tom’s hindquarters before he vanished into the undergrowth.
Waspwhisker huffed out a long breath. “Cowards!”
Hawkwing was surprised that the fight had ended so quickly. He had thought that the two groups were well matched, and he had never imagined that the rogues would give up so easily.
But Darktail showed their leader a thing or two, he reflected. That mange-pelt couldn’t stand up to him!
Hawkwing watched the final quivers of the ferns as the rogues beat a retreat, then turned to Waspwhisker. “Are you still doubtful about Darktail?” he asked. “Look how bravely he fought!”
Waspwhisker let out a grunt. “That was well fought,” he mewed, with a nod to Darktail. “But if the rogue had moved a bit faster, what would you have done then? He’d have had you at his mercy.”
Darktail looked up from grooming his shoulder, where a tuft of fur had been torn away. “I’d worry about that if it happened,” he replied calmly.
Waspwhisker turned away with a single twitch of his tail, showing he was still unconvinced. Hawkwing let out a growl of annoyance at the older warrior’s grudging praise of the cat who had probably won them the battle, then instantly regretted it.
Waspwhisker was a good mentor to Duskpaw, he told himself. I don’t want to fight with him. I just wish some of my Clanmates would give Darktail a break.
Meanwhile, Waspwhisker was looking over the rest of the patrol, checking them for injuries. Every cat was carrying a few scratches, but none of them was badly injured.
“Right, let’s finish marking the border,” he growled. “And then we’ll get back to camp and report this.”
Padding along the new border with his Clanmates, Hawkwing’s mind went back to his earlier decision not to mention that he had seen Darktail leaving Twoleg food on SkyClan territory.
He fought so well against the rogues, he thought. He can’t mean any harm to SkyClan. Maybe I should just ask him what it was all about.
“Darktail,” he began, falling in beside the white tom, “I saw you yesterday near the Twolegplace.” No need to let him know I followed him there. “It looked like you had some Twoleg food. . . .”
Darktail gave him a sidelong glance, half guilty and half amused. “I’ve been around a few kittypets in my time,” he admitted. “And I kind of got a taste for Twoleg scraps. Don’t tell any cat, will you? I think Waspwhisker would claw my ears off!”
“Uh . . . no. But that doesn’t explain why you left—”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about those rogues,” Darktail interrupted, as if he had dismissed the whole question of the Twoleg food. “I wonder if there are any more of them around. Maybe Leafstar should set a watch.”
As Darktail moved on with the patrol, Hawkwing stopped and raised his head to sniff the air, catching a sweetish, rotting smell coming from the edge of a nearby bramble thicket. He bounded over to take a look, and spotted more Twoleg food there, crumbling away into pieces as if the flesh it was made of had been clawed into tiny scraps and then somehow mashed back together. It was beginning to rot; Hawkwing guessed that it had been there for two or three days.
“Hey, Darktail, have you seen—” Hawkwing began, but as he turned he realized that while he was investigating the Twoleg food the rest of the patrol had moved on.
Hawkwing picked up the pace to catch them up, and found Darktail chatting amiably to Bellapaw. Pleased that for once Darktail was having a friendly conversation with a SkyClan cat, Hawkwing didn’t interrupt.
There’s no point, he told himself. What’s a bit of Twoleg food? Every cat would think I had bees in my brain if I made a fuss about it.
CHAPTER 14
As soon as Waspwhisker led the patrolling cats back into camp, he bounded over to Leafstar, who was sharing fresh-kill with Sharpclaw at the foot of the Rockpile. Hawkwing and the others followed; Hawkwing noticed that several of his Clanmates, sunning themselves on the rocks nearby, sat up with ears pricked at the patrol’s rapid approach.
Pebblepaw was among them, licking one paw and drawing it over her ears to give them a thorough wash.
She looks so cute when she does that! Hawkwing thought, then instantly felt ashamed of himself. I shouldn’t be thinking like that when the Clan is in danger!
“Leafstar,” Waspwhisker announced breathlessly as he halted in front of the Clan leader, “rogues attacked us in the forest!”
Instantly Leafstar sprang to her paws. “What? Where? Tell me everything!”
“Just where we were setting the new border markers,” Waspwhisker explained, while more of the SkyClan cats gathered around to listen. “There were five of them, led by a huge silver-gray brute.”
“We told them to get off our territory,” Hawkwing added. “But they wouldn’t go, so we had to fight them. We—”
He was interrupted by a storm of questions and protests from his Clanmates, who pressed closer around the patrol, their fur bristling at the news of the attack.
“First raccoons, now rogues! What next?”
“How dare they? This is our place!”
“Are we still safe here?”
Drawn by the clamor, more SkyClan warriors appeared from their dens, scrambling down the trail or leaping from rock to rock until the stretch of ground beside the Rockpile was a heaving mass of cats.
Hawkwing found that Pebblepaw was by his side, gazing at him with anxious eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Hawkwing felt a hint of warmth deep in his belly that Pebblepaw was concerned for him. “I’m fine,” he replied. “Just a bit bruised.”
Pebblepaw still held him with her gaze, making Hawkwing feel awkward and yet strangely excited. “That’s good,” she murmured at last.
Before Hawkwing could respond, Leafstar fought her way through the crowd of cats and jumped up the mass of boulders until she stood at the top, with Sharpclaw close behind her.
“Cats of SkyClan!” she yowled, flourishing her tail for silence. “Listen to me!”
But several moments passed until the caterwauling died down enough for the Clan leader to make herself heard.
“It’s vital that we don’t panic,” she began. “Waspwhisker, did you drive the rogues away?”
“We did,” Waspwhisker replied with a lash of his tail.
“But they’ll be back!” Sagenose called out from the crowd.
“Yes, how long can we keep fighting?” Nettlesplash asked.
“And what about the kits?” Birdwing added.
The Clan erupted again into renewed clamor, until Cherrytail leaped onto a boulder beside the stream and managed to raise her voice above her Clanmates’.
“Leafstar, the whole of the Clan should hunt down these rogues immediately,” she meowed. “We have to teach them that they can’t mess with SkyClan!”
His mother’s words woke a fire of determination inside Hawkwing. “Yes!” he yowled, kneading the ground eagerly with his forepaws. “Let’s do it!”
He was even more encouraged to see that his father, Sharpclaw, was nodding in agreement. “I’ll lead a patrol—” he began.
“That’s crazy,” Plumwillow interrupted.
“Yes,” Firefern agreed. “Since the raccoons first attacked, we’ve lost the daylight warriors, and StarClan knows when their Twolegs will let them out again. We’re not as strong as we used to be.”
“And so many of our warriors are new,” Plumwillow pointed out. “They’re good, strong cats, but not exactly experienced fighters.”
Hawkwing began to bristle at the gray she-cat’s words. How many badgers have you fought off, flea-brain? But he managed not to speak his thought out loud.
“I agree with Plumwillow,” Bouncefire mewed, a hint of fear in his voice. “We’re more vulnerable than we’ve ever been. If we can’t protect our territory, then is this the end of SkyClan?”
“Who says we can’t protect our territory?” Mistfeather snarled.
“But the rogues . . . ,” Firefern protested.
“Silence!” Leafstar hissed, lashing her tail. “I will not hear such talk. Have you forgotten our history?” she went on when the outcry had died down into something approaching quiet. “SkyClan has endured so much. When Twolegs invaded our old territory and drove us out, when the other Clans refused to share with us—not even that could end SkyClan. And this new attack won’t, either!”
Sharpclaw let out a discontented snort. “I know my history as well as any cat,” he grumbled. “And I’ve been wondering why we’re so keen to find the spark that remains—if that really does mean the kin of Firestar—when the other Clans are at least part of the reason why we were driven to settle here in the gorge in the first place.”
“Yes, the other Clans have failed us in the past,” Leafstar admitted. “But if StarClan says that we must find ThunderClan, their will is not to be questioned.”
“But so far,” Tinycloud put in, “trying to follow the will of StarClan has only led us into trouble.”
At her words, true silence fell over all the SkyClan cats, and the gaze of every cat turned to Echosong. The medicine cat was sitting on a rock at the edge of the crowd, with Frecklewish at her side. Hawkwing realized that so far she hadn’t added anything to the discussion.
“I confess that I’m confused,” Echosong mewed after a moment’s pause. “I don’t believe that I’ve misinterpreted my visions, but there must be something that I’m not seeing.”
“Can’t you seek out StarClan?” Darktail, who had sat silent all this while at the foot of the Rockpile, rose to his paws and turned to Echosong. “Can’t you ask them for more details?”
Hawkwing twitche
d his whiskers in annoyance at the rogue tom’s tone, which was close to disrespectful. Then he shrugged, reflecting that Darktail wasn’t a Clan cat, and didn’t know Clan ways, especially how a medicine cat should be treated by her Clanmates. He doesn’t mean to insult Echosong.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Echosong told Darktail, her tail drooping. “I should have expected that StarClan would have given me some kind of new sign by now—but they haven’t. If StarClan had wanted to warn us about this new attack, they would have done so.”
“So does that mean this StarClan has no interest in saving SkyClan?” Rain protested, rising to stand beside Darktail. His tone was even more brusque. “Is that what you’re getting at?”
Echosong hesitated before replying. A thrill of pure dread tingled through Hawkwing as he realized that even the medicine cat might not be totally sure of what their Clan’s destiny was meant to be.
“Maybe . . . maybe this is our chance to prove ourselves to StarClan,” Echosong suggested at last, though her voice and her flustered look drained all the conviction out of her words. “But how or why . . .” The medicine cat shook her head. “I don’t know.”
A horrible silence fell over the Clan as the cats exchanged dismayed glances. What will happen to us now, Hawkwing wondered, if our medicine cat can’t advise us anymore?
“Cats of SkyClan!” Leafstar meowed after a few heartbeats. Clearly she was trying to force energy and certainty into her voice. “We will not do anything rash. We will protect our camp and our borders, as we always do. These rogues won’t drive us out—we’ll never let that happen. And we will wait for the next message from StarClan. I’m sure it will be coming soon. Now go to your duties.”
As the Clan began to disperse, the cats muttering uneasily to each other, Hawkwing wished that he could believe what Leafstar had said. Even more, he wished that he was sure Leafstar believed it herself.
Hawkwing joined a hunting patrol and returned just after sunhigh with a squirrel for the fresh-kill pile. All through the hunt he had been distracted, remembering the battle against the rogues and worrying about the troubles that were gathering like thick shadows around his Clan.