Эрин Хантер - Path Of A Warrior

“You must have had a complicated dream last night,” he purred at last. “I told you that vole didn’t look right.”

“Are you sure?” Tawnypelt turned slowly, staring around the camp. She desperately wanted to believe him. Crowfrost, ShadowClan’s deputy, had joined Dawnpelt outside the warriors’ den. Pinenose was sharing the fat rabbit Tawnypelt had caught with Kinkfur, the crotchety elder. She could hear kits squealing happily in the nursery.

Please let this be real!

A sense of peace lay over the whole of ShadowClan’s camp. As she watched her Clanmates, Tawnypelt relaxed for the first time in a long time. She let her side press against Rowanstar’s, shoulder to shoulder with him. “This is real?” she asked hopefully.

Rowanstar’s tail brushed across her back, reassuring. “This is the only real ShadowClan.”

Tawnypelt purred. “I’m so—”

“Pouncekit! Pouncekit, wait for me!” A yowl rang across the camp. Tawnypelt opened her eyes and stared at the brambles of the warriors’ den, her heart sinking. A dream. I was right. It wasn’t real. Rowanstar was dead. So many of her Clanmates and kin were dead.

“That’s not how you play, Shadowkit!” Lightkit’s yowl grated across Tawnypelt’s nerves, shaking away the last of her dream. The light in the den was the pale pinkish glow of early dawn, but she knew she wasn’t going to fall back asleep. Climbing from her nest, she headed out of the warriors’ den. As she stepped outside, the cold of early leaf-bare sliced through her fur, and she shivered.

“Get off me, Lightkit!” Pouncekit screeched.

“Oh, that’s enough !” Juniperclaw, his black fur tousled from sleep, brushed past Tawnypelt and stormed to the center of the clearing. “You kits need to settle down right now,” he growled furiously. “You’re waking up the whole camp!”

The three kits froze, staring up at him with identical wide amber eyes, so like Rowanstar’s that Tawnypelt’s heart gave a strange little throb. No, not Rowanstar. Rowan claw . Rowanstar had given up his status as ShadowClan’s leader and become Rowanclaw again before he died. Her dream had left her confused.

“Sorry, Juniperclaw,” Dovewing mewed easily from the entrance to the nursery. “But they’re only kits.”

Juniperclaw’s thin black tail whipped back and forth angrily as he stared at Dovewing. “Maybe that’s how kits act in ThunderClan ,” he snarled. “But here we expect them to have some consideration for their Clanmates.”

Dovewing looked taken aback, but before she could say anything, Tawnypelt’s son, Tigerheart— no, Tiger star , he’s leader now; what is wrong with me today?— stepped out of the leader’s den. “Kits, you need to be quieter,” he said sternly. “And Juniperclaw, you’ve got no right to talk to Dovewing that way. She’s as much a ShadowClan cat as you are.”

Juniperclaw dipped his head in acknowledgment, but his green eyes were stormy with resentment. “Whatever you say, Tigerstar,” he muttered.

As Juniperclaw headed back toward the warriors’ den, Tawnypelt tried to give him a sympathetic look, but the tom avoided her gaze. We’re all kin, she thought sadly, but it doesn’t feel like it these days. Juniperclaw was one of Dawnpelt’s kits. Maybe things would be different if Dawnpelt were still alive. Fairly or not, it felt like Juniperclaw still blamed Rowanclaw, and even Tawnypelt herself, for not doing a better job of holding ShadowClan together when the evil rogue Darktail had moved into their territory. He’d eventually convinced enough ShadowClan warriors to join his “Kin” that ShadowClan was nearly destroyed. For a brief period before Tigerstar became leader and revived the Clan, ShadowClan had ceased to exist altogether, folding into SkyClan.

“Hey, Tawnypelt, want to play with us?” Pouncekit, the gray she-kit, was peering up at her. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Just thinking,” Tawnypelt said gently. The kits were still young enough that their eyes looked huge and round, surrounded by layers of fluff. It felt like it hadn’t been long since Tigerstar and Dawnpelt were that small.

“We’re sorry if we woke you up,” Pouncekit’s brother, Shadowkit, said, and both she-kits nodded earnestly.

“It’s fine,” Tawnypelt told them, feeling a surge of affection. They really were sweet kits.

“Come on,” Lightkit said cheerfully to her littermates. “We’ll be so quiet now, as quiet as when we used to hide from the Twolegs.”

Tawnypelt blinked in surprise as the three kits ran off. Kits that age shouldn’t even know about Twolegs, she thought, and then corrected herself. Of course these three did. They’d been born in a faraway place, surrounded by Twolegs and strange Clanless cats, after Tigerheart and Dovewing had run away together.

She loved them, of course. They were her kin, and they were good kits.

But they were so strange. Not like real ShadowClan cats at all, she thought, and immediately felt guilty. It shouldn’t matter that they had been born among strangers, and it shouldn’t matter that their mother was a ThunderClan cat. They were ShadowClan now, weren’t they?

Sort of.

“Sorry about that.” Tigerstar and Dovewing had come to stand alongside her. Tigerstar brushed his cheek against hers, and she touched noses with Dovewing.

“Would you like to share a vole?” Dovewing asked politely.

Tawnypelt’s dream was still fresh in her mind: the intense focus of the hunt, the exhilaration of the final leap, the satisfaction of feeding her Clan. “I think I’ll go hunting, actually,” she said. “Build up the fresh-kill pile a little.”

Tigerstar’s ears twitched. “I sent a patrol out with Strikestone last night,” he said. “They brought back so much prey, I don’t think we need any cat to hunt again before sundown.”

Tawnypelt’s ears flattened with annoyance. Tigerstar had named her his deputy. She’d never asked for the position. But since he’d chosen her, Tigerstar should let her be deputy. Organizing hunting patrols was the deputy’s job.

She took a slow breath and pricked up her ears again. Tigerstar is a new leader. And I owe him my support. He’ll grow into the role, just like Rowanstar did. But he has to find his own way.

“I’d like you to stay in camp and help strengthen the warriors’ den,” Tigerstar went on.

Tawnypelt sighed. “I think I’d be more use hunting,” she meowed, making sure to keep her voice pleasant. Her paws were itching to get out of camp, to be alone in the pine forest for a while. How desperately she had missed the forest while ShadowClan had been living with SkyClan!

Tigerstar exchanged a glance with Dovewing. “The more cats we have restoring the dens, the sooner ShadowClan’s camp will be back to the way it was,” he said firmly.

Tawnypelt looked around. Two of the new apprentices Tigerstar had brought with him from the strange Twolegplace where his kits had been born—Blazepaw and Antpaw—were sharing tongues outside the warriors’ den. Juniperclaw and Scorchfur were picking over the prey in the fresh-kill pile. Slatefur was sharpening his claws on a tree at the edge of camp.

And there were others, all over camp—cats who had been born outside ShadowClan, cats who had betrayed their Clan and their leader for Darktail, cats who had abandoned their dying Clan out of fear and had only just returned to the lake.

“Okay,” Tawnypelt agreed, but deep inside, despite herself, she was thinking: ShadowClan will never be the way it was.

Tawnypelt sneezed. Dust was settling on her fur and getting into her eyes, making them itch. The sun was high overhead. They’d been at this for a long time, and their task was nowhere close to finished.