“Look, Ashfur.” Squirrelflight’s voice told Brambleclaw that she was trying hard to hold her temper. “I really care about you as a friend, but I don’t want any more than that.”
“But I love you!” Ashfur protested. More hesitantly, he added, “We’d be great together, Squirrelflight, I know we would.”
Brambleclaw felt a stab of sympathy for the grey warrior. He remembered how he had felt when he thought he had lost Squirrelflight’s affection.
“I’m sorry,” Squirrelflight went on. “I never meant to hurt you, but Brambleclaw—well, I think StarClan has destined us to be together.”
“I don’t know how you can say that!” There was the hint of a snarl in Ashfur’s voice. “You said yourself that it’s impossible to trust a cat with Brambleclaw’s heritage. He’s a great cat, I know, but he is still Tigerstar’s son.”
Brambleclaw’s feelings of sympathy vanished instantly. He unsheathed his long, curved claws and sank them into the ground. Would he never be judged for what he was, instead of who his father had been? Worse, would Squirrelflight be unable to trust him because Tigerstar was his father?
“I’ll judge Brambleclaw by his own actions,” she retorted hotly, “not by something that other cats did long before I was born.”
“I’m only thinking of you, Squirrelflight,” Ashfur meowed. “I can remember Tigerstar. His paws were red with the blood of innocent cats. You know that he murdered my mother to lure a pack of dogs to our camp?”
Squirrelflight murmured something Brambleclaw couldn’t catch, then went on more clearly, “But that doesn’t mean Brambleclaw will turn out like his father.”
Movement behind Brambleclaw distracted him, and he realised that more of the warriors were stirring. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, he slid quickly between the branches and into the clearing.
Squirrelflight turned to him as he appeared. “Hi, Brambleclaw!”
The light was strengthening and the sky was clear, promising sunlight later to drive off the dawn chill. But for Brambleclaw the warmth in Squirrelflight’s eyes was even better. He padded over and touched noses with her, trying to ignore the frosty look Ashfur gave him.
As he stretched to ease the stiffness in his shoulder, Brambleclaw saw Firestar emerge from his den onto the Highledge and taste the morning air.
“Firestar!” he called. “Has the dawn patrol left yet?”
“No, would you like to lead one?”
Brambleclaw dipped his head. “Of course. Coming with me?” he asked Squirrelflight.
She nodded. Ashfur mewed abruptly, “I’m going to check on Birchpaw,” and stalked off towards Leafpool’s den without waiting for a reply.
Squirrelflight watched him walk away, her green gaze troubled. “I’m sorry he’s been hurt,” she meowed. “I thought he was the right mate for me, but he’s not. I don’t know how I can make him understand.”
Brambleclaw knew there was nothing he could say to make her feel better, so he just pressed his muzzle briefly to hers. But would the Clan side with him or with Ashfur? The grey warrior was popular with all their Clanmates, while Brambleclaw had forged his strongest friendships with the cats who had travelled to the sun-drown-place, and all but Squirrelflight were in different Clans.
A rustle sounded behind him as Brightheart pushed her way into the open. She glanced around as if she was looking for Cloudtail, then pricked her ears when she spotted him outside the nursery. He was talking to Daisy while her three kits tried to scramble over him. Brambleclaw saw sadness shadow Brightheart’s gaze, and felt a stab of anger. Cloudtail had bees in his brain if he couldn’t see how he was hurting Brightheart with the attention he was giving to the horseplace cat!
“Hey, Brightheart,” he meowed, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything. “Do you want to come with the dawn patrol?”
Brightheart shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ve promised to help Leafpool this morning. Can we have Whitepaw again?”
“Sure. It’s a good idea to keep her busy while Brackenfur’s in the nursery with Sorreltail.”
“Thanks. I’ll go and call her.” Brightheart took a pace towards the apprentices’ den, then paused to look back. “It’s really great to see you and Squirrelflight back together again,” she added softly. Surprise kept Brambleclaw silent, while Brightheart bounded away, calling for Whitepaw.
Impatient to be off, Brambleclaw stuck his head back through the branches into the den. Dustpelt was just getting up, shaking scraps of moss from his brown tabby fur.
“Dawn patrol?” Brambleclaw meowed.
Dustpelt twitched his whiskers. “I’ll be right with you. If ShadowClan have heard about the badgers, they might be getting ideas about helping themselves to our territory while we’re still recovering.”
Brambleclaw had been thinking exactly the same thing. The border with WindClan should be secure. Onestar had brought his warriors to help drive out the badgers; he wouldn’t be so two-faced as to take advantage of ThunderClan’s weakness. But Blackstar, the ShadowClan leader, was a different cat altogether. He would take any chance he could to extend his territory.
Calling Spiderleg to complete the patrol, Brambleclaw retreated into the clearing again. Once the other warriors joined him, he led the way out through the tangle of thorns at the entrance and down towards the lake.
By the time the trees thinned around them, the sun was rising over the hills. The lake glittered so brightly that it dazzled Brambleclaw’s eyes. A breeze blew across the water, ruffling his fur. As he padded along the lakeshore towards the stream that marked the boundary with ShadowClan, he realised how good it felt to have Squirrelflight at his side again. Quarrelling with her always made him feel as if his fur were being brushed the wrong way.
“You go ahead,” he ordered Spiderleg. “Check the ShadowClan scent markers as far as the dead tree. Make sure they’re all where they should be and wait for us there.” As Spiderleg raced off, he added to Dustpelt and Squirrelflight, “We’ll renew our own scent markers and check for ShadowClan scent on our territory.”
He led his patrol upstream until they reached the point where the stream veered away, deeper into ShadowClan.
Dustpelt let out a hiss. “I still can’t believe we let ShadowClan set their markers here,” he meowed with an irritable twitch of his tail. “The stream should be the boundary. Any cat can see it.”
Squirrelflight’s tail curled up with amusement. “Try telling that to Blackstar. You might get away with both your ears.”
Her former mentor snorted and stalked on, following the line of the border. Before they had gone many paw steps further, Brambleclaw heard the sound of a cat hurtling through the trees ahead of them. He raised his tail for the others to stop, then tasted the air, but the only scent he could detect was ThunderClan’s.
A clump of bracken waved wildly and Spiderleg dashed into the open.
“What are you doing?” Brambleclaw scolded. “I told you to wait by the dead tree. You haven’t had enough time to—”
“I know,” Spiderleg interrupted, his chest heaving. “But I found something really weird. You have to come and look.”
“What now?” Dustpelt sighed, rolling his eyes. “Not more badgers, I hope?”
“Trouble from ShadowClan?” Brambleclaw asked sharply.
“No, some Twoleg thing,” Spiderleg panted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He waved his tail for them to follow. Brambleclaw exchanged a glance with Squirrelflight and padded after Spiderleg, still checking carefully for any ShadowClan scent on the ThunderClan side of the border. He scented nothing but the usual markers, until Spiderleg brought them to a small clearing. The ground was almost covered with a thick growth of ferns, the fresh green fronds unfurling in the pale sun.
Brambleclaw felt the fur on his shoulders bristle as he picked up a new scent. “Fox,” he growled.
“Stale, though,” Squirrelflight added. “There hasn’t been a fox here for the last couple of days, at least.”
Brambleclaw wasn’t reassured. He had spotted a track through the ferns, a narrow path dimpled with many paw marks. The scent of fox was strongest there; the vile creatures must use it regularly. He reminded himself to check the area later to see if there was a den nearby.
Spiderleg had stopped a little further up the fox track, a few tail-lengths from the ShadowClan border. “Here’s the Twoleg thing,” he meowed, pointing with his tail.
Brambleclaw pushed his way through the ferns to avoid setting a paw where the foxes had been. There was something gleaming near the young warrior’s paws. It was a length of thin, shiny stuff, curved into a loop and fastened to a stick that was stuck in the ground.
“You’re right, it must be a Twoleg thing,” he mewed. “They use that shiny stuff to make fences for their sheep.”
“And there’s Twoleg scent all over it,” Dustpelt added, catching up to them. “What’s it doing here? What’s it for?”
Spiderleg bent his head to sniff it more closely, but Dustpelt shouldered him aside before he could touch it. “Mousebrain!” he snapped. “Didn’t your mentor ever tell you not to stick your nose in before you know what you’re dealing with?”
“Sure, Mousefur taught me everything,” Spiderleg retorted, glaring at the older warrior.
“Remember it, then.”
Squirrelflight stood beside Brambleclaw while they both studied the loop and stick closely.
“What happens if we touch it?” Squirrelflight asked, cautiously advancing a paw.
Brambleclaw’s tail struck her paw aside. “We don’t want to find out the hard way,” he warned her.
“But we have to do something,” Squirrelflight protested. “Hang on, let’s try this.” She grabbed a long stick in her jaws.
“Careful,” Brambleclaw warned.
Squirrelflight flicked her ears at him, then crept cautiously up to the Twoleg thing and poked the stick into the shining loop. At once, the loop snapped tight, gripping the end of the stick. Spiderleg let out a squeak of alarm and leaped backward, his pelt bristling and his ears flattened.
Brambleclaw stood his ground, but a shudder went through him from ears to tail-tip. He closed his eyes, imagining a cat loping along the track, unaware of any danger, until it thrust its head into the loop and . . . “That could snap a cat’s neck,” he meowed.
“Or choke it to death,” Dustpelt agreed grimly.
Squirrelflight dropped the stick. “This isn’t meant for us,” she pointed out. “The Twolegs put it on a fox track. They must mean to trap foxes with it.”
“But why?” meowed Spiderleg.
Dustpelt shrugged. “They’re crazy. All Twolegs are crazy.”
Brambleclaw looked again at the length of shiny stuff, thinner than an ivy tendril, wrapped so tightly around the stick that it had crushed the pale green bark. “It’s harmless now,” he mewed, “but there might be more of them. We’ll have to report it, and make sure every cat knows what to watch out for.”
“At least we know what to do with them.” Dustpelt dipped his head to his former apprentice. “Good thinking, Squirrelflight.”
Squirrelflight’s green eyes gleamed; Dustpelt didn’t give praise lightly.
“Spiderleg, too. That was well spotted,” Brambleclaw added. But his belly clenched at the thought of how easily the young warrior could have run straight into the trap. “We’d better finish the patrol,” he ordered. “And let’s all be careful where we put our paws. The forest could be full of these things.”
As they made their way along the ShadowClan border, Brambleclaw let Dustpelt take the lead. He and Squirrelflight padded along, side by side, at the rear of the patrol. Brambleclaw tried not to let her closeness distract him from tasting the air and keeping his eyes open for any more of the sinister shining loops.
“Do you think we ought to warn the other Clans about these fox traps?” he asked her.
Squirrelflight glanced at him, her green eyes wary. “You’re thinking of Hawkfrost, aren’t you?”
“No, not just RiverClan,” Brambleclaw meowed, trying not to let his neck fur bristle. “WindClan probably haven’t much to worry about, except for that patch of woodland on the other side of the stream. But there must be traps on ShadowClan territory; the one we found was right on the border.”
“Firestar will have to decide whether we tell them or not,” Squirrelflight pointed out. “He’ll probably announce it at the next Gathering.”
Brambleclaw halted and faced her. “Squirrelflight, can we talk this through without clawing at each other? Did you really think I just wanted to warn RiverClan because of Hawkfrost?” Hawkfrost—his half-brother, Tigerstar’s son, the cat Squirrelflight refused to trust. If he and Squirrelflight were to be together now, they had to sort this problem out once and for all.
“Yes, I did think that.” To his relief Squirrelflight was direct, but didn’t sound angry. “You know how I feel about Hawkfrost.”
“But he’s my brother,” Brambleclaw reminded her. “I can’t ignore that, any more than I can ignore that Tawnypelt’s my sister, even though she is a ShadowClan warrior.”
He wondered if he was being entirely honest. He had never walked in dreams with Tawnypelt, as he did with Hawkfrost, following twisting paths to their meetings with their father, Tigerstar. Tawnypelt had never joined in these meetings, where he and Hawkfrost were taught to lead their Clans. He knew he could never tell Squirrelflight, or any other cat in ThunderClan, about that dark forest and the dark warrior who waited for him.
But there’s no need, he argued with himself. They’d never understand. There might be things Tigerstar can teach me, but that doesn’t mean I’d do what he did to gain power.
“Tawnypelt’s different,” Squirrelflight persisted. “She journeyed with us, for one thing. And she’s half Thunder Clan.”
Brambleclaw bit back a protest. He wanted to settle the quarrel, not start it up again. “Think of it like this,” he began. “If Leafpool had gone to WindClan with Crowfeather, would you care for her any less?”
“Of course not!” Squirrelflight’s eyes stretched wide. “She could go off with the whole of WindClan, and she’d still be my sister.”
“And Hawkfrost is still my brother. Like Tawnypelt’s still my sister. We’ll always be kin, even though we are in different Clans. You’re lucky that you have your sister in the same Clan. I’d give anything to have my kin with me.”
Squirrelflight searched his face with a penetrating green gaze. “OK,” she mewed. “I guess I can understand that. I just don’t like to feel that Hawkfrost is as important to you as your Clanmates.”
“He’s not,” Brambleclaw replied at once. “My first loyalty will always be to my Clan.”
“Brambleclaw!” Dustpelt’s voice interrupted them. Brambleclaw whipped around to see the brown tabby warrior shouldering his way through a clump of bracken; Spiderleg peered out of the ferns just behind him. “Are we on a patrol, or aren’t we? Do you plan to stand there all day gossiping?”
“Sorry,” Brambleclaw meowed, bounding towards Dustpelt and taking the lead to head further along the border.
As Dustpelt, Spiderleg, and Squirrelflight padded hard on his paws, he hoped that his arguments about Hawkfrost had convinced Squirrelflight more thoroughly than they had convinced him. He hoped that if he ever had to choose, he really would put his Clan before his brother.
Chapter 5
“Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Highledge!”
Firestar’s yowl halted Leafpool on her way back from the elders’ den, where she had been checking Mousefur’s wound. The brown-furred elder was still complaining of stiffness, but the claw marks had begun to heal, and there was no sign of infection.
Leafpool made her way towards the edge of the clearing, stopping beneath the ledge where Firestar stood looking down at his Clan. Sandstorm and Thornclaw got up from the fresh-kill pile and padded over, while Cloudtail and Rainwhisker left their work on the thorn
barrier. Uneasiness gnawed in Leafpool’s belly. The dawn patrol had just returned and gone straight to Firestar; had they discovered more badgers, or maybe signs that ShadowClan were trying to take over part of the territory?
Trying to stifle her anxiety, Leafpool sat down beside Ferncloud, who mewed a greeting and asked anxiously, “How’s Birchpaw?”
“He’ll be fine,” Leafpool replied. Birchpaw was Ferncloud’s kit, the only one of his litter to survive the famine in the old forest; she could understand how worried his mother must be about his injuries. “The swelling around his eye is going down. But I’ll keep him with me for a few more days until I’m sure there’s no infection.”
Ferncloud gave Leafpool’s ear a grateful lick. “You’re a wonderful medicine cat, Leafpool. I’m so glad you came back.”
I haven’t been wonderful, Leafpool thought. I abandoned my Clan!
The elders emerged from their den and settled down near the rock wall, glancing nervously at one another like they expected bad news. Stormfur and Brook hovered on the edge of the clearing, as if they weren’t sure whether they were meant to be there or not.
Leafpool beckoned to them with her tail. “Come and sit here,” she invited them. “You’re welcome to join in while you’re staying with us.”
Nodding gratefully, Stormfur and Brook came over to join her. Daisy brought her three kits out, and Brackenfur sat in the entrance to the nursery, where he could listen and still be close to Sorreltail.
Brambleclaw and the rest of the dawn patrol were standing together at the foot of the tumbled rocks. Leafpool saw their tails were fluffed out and their eyes alert, as if they could sense danger on its way.
“Cats of ThunderClan,” Firestar began, “Brambleclaw and the dawn patrol found something you need to know about. Brambleclaw, will you tell them?”
Brambleclaw leaped up onto one of the rocks. “We found a Twoleg trap on a fox track,” he meowed. “It’s a loop of thin, shiny stuff, fastened to a stick driven into the ground. When you touch the loop, it pulls tight. Any cat who got their head stuck in it could be killed.”