Эрин Хантер - Crowfeather's Trial

“Greetings,” she meowed. “I suppose you have a good reason for lurking there on our territory?”

Crowfeather remembered that Ivypool had trained in the Dark Forest, spying for ThunderClan, and there wasn’t much she didn’t know about tracking in the dark. Or fighting, if it came to that. How long did she know that we were here?

“Well?” Ivypool asked.

Rising to his paws, Crowfeather gave his pelt a shake, trying to recover a little dignity. “Let me explain . . . ,” he began.

But at that moment, Bumblestripe padded forward and pushed his muzzle into Breezepelt’s shoulder fur. “They’re carrying our scent!” he exclaimed. “That proves they’re up to no good!”

Breezepelt started backward, his pelt beginning to bristle, and slapped Bumblestripe away with a lash of his tail. A growl came from deep in Bumblestripe’s throat, while Breezepelt slid out his claws. Their backs arched, as if they would leap into a fight at any moment.

“No!” Crowfeather ordered. He pushed Breezepelt back and stepped between him and the ThunderClan tom.

At the same moment, Ivypool snapped, “Stop that, Bumblestripe.” She stood beside Crowfeather, separating the two hostile toms.

Reluctantly, Bumblestripe took a step back, though he and Breezepelt were still glaring at each other. Ivypool stood waiting with her head tilted to one side, while Poppyfrost had withdrawn a few paces with the two apprentices. Crowfeather heard her say to them, “If a fight breaks out, run !”

“Look, Ivypool . . .” Crowfeather addressed the silver-and-white she-cat, hoping she would be reasonable. “We’re here on an important mission. We’re looking for Nightcloud.”

“But Nightcloud is dead,” Ivypool objected. “Onestar announced it at the Gathering.”

Crowfeather began to explain how he had followed Nightcloud’s scent from one of the tunnel entrances, until he had found her blood and scent beside a pool, mixed with the reek of fox.

“Of course we thought that a fox got her,” he mewed.

“So you’ve been trespassing here before!” Bumblestripe broke in accusingly.

Ivypool twitched her ears in annoyance. “Bumblestripe, will you for StarClan’s sake shut up !” She nodded to Crowfeather. “Go on.”

Crowfeather told her how Kestrelflight had failed to find Nightcloud in StarClan, and how that made her Clanmates hope that she was still alive, and then how he had met Yew, who’d told him of meeting her on the edge of a Twolegplace beyond the forest. “But our best hope of finding her is to go back to that pool and see if we can find her scent leading away from it.”

“Good luck with that, after all this time,” Ivypool murmured. “But I can understand that you have to try. Yes, they can, Bumblestripe,” she added, glaring at her Clanmate, who had opened his jaws to protest. “Nightcloud is a noble warrior, and she deserves the help of any cat.”

Bumblestripe stared down at his paws, a sullen expression on his face, though he didn’t argue anymore.

Ivypool turned back to Crowfeather. “Bumblestripe and I will escort you,” she told Crowfeather. “We can’t have WindClan cats wandering around alone in our territory.”

“We don’t need—” Gorsetail began, looking outraged, but Crowfeather interrupted her with a lash of his tail.

“That’s fine by us,” he meowed, and his Clanmates, even Gorsetail, murmured agreement.

It’s so easy to work with ThunderClan when we agree on a goal, Crowfeather reflected. If only Onestar had seen that, we might be done with the stoats by now.

“Then I’ll take the apprentices back to camp,” Poppyfrost announced.

“Not fair,” Lilypaw muttered. “You said you’d take us night hunting. And we haven’t caught anything yet.”

“Yeah, trust WindClan to spoil our fun,” Seedpaw added.

“Never mind.” Poppyfrost gathered the apprentices together with a sweep of her tail. “We’ll see what we can pick up on our way back.” She dipped her head to Ivypool and padded off in the direction of the ThunderClan camp, with the two apprentices trailing after her, glaring over their shoulders at the WindClan cats.

“Okay, Crowfeather,” Ivypool meowed briskly. “Show us this pool.”

She padded beside him as they set out again, with Bumblestripe bringing up the rear. Crowfeather could see that Breezepelt was still bristling with anger, glaring over his shoulder at Bumblestripe, flexing his claws. Crowfeather shot him a warning glance and hoped that he had sense enough not to start any more trouble with the ThunderClan tom.

When they finally reached the pool with its fringe of ferns, Crowfeather’s heart sank as he tasted the scent of fox in the air, stronger and more recent than when he had been here before. They must come here regularly. Can’t ThunderClan keep the mange-pelts off their territory?

Examining the ground around the pool, Crowfeather found the spot where he could still see that Nightcloud’s blood had sunk into the grass, but there was not the slightest trace of her scent.

“Work outward from the pool,” he instructed his Clanmates. “That way we might pick up her trail and find out which way she went.”

Ivypool and Bumblestripe stood to one side of the pool while Crowfeather and the other WindClan cats searched for Nightcloud’s scent. Crowfeather felt his hope sinking away like rain into dry ground as the moments passed and they found nothing. He was wondering how much longer they could go on searching when Breezepelt let out an excited yowl.

“I’ve found it!”

Crowfeather looked up. Breezepelt was standing several fox-lengths away from the pool, in the opposite direction from WindClan and toward the Twolegplace that Yew had pointed out to him. Swiftly he skirted the pool and bounded over to join his son, hoping that Breezepelt hadn’t imagined finding the scent out of sheer desperation.

Breezepelt pointed with his muzzle to a clump of chervil, the leaves wilting and frostbitten. Crowfeather bent his head to sniff, parted his jaws to taste the air. The fox reek was swamping everything; he was sure there were at least two of them, and possibly three. Beneath the fox scent there was a trace of something else. Crowfeather wanted to believe that Breezepelt was right, but he wondered if he was just smelling what he wanted to smell. He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure,” he murmured.

“It is Nightcloud’s scent!” Breezepelt insisted.

Hootpaw pushed his way forward. “Let me try!”

Gorsetail hooked his tail around her apprentice’s neck and drew him back. “Stay out of the way,” he ordered. “We don’t want your scent confusing everything.”

Crowfeather could see that Breezepelt’s eyes looked hopeful and yet uncertain, as if he wasn’t quite sure that he had really found his mother’s scent after so long. Crowfeather guessed that he too was desperately trying to convince himself.

“If she went this way, she wasn’t heading for WindClan,” Crowfeather murmured thoughtfully. “And there’s only one reason for that.”

“The foxes were chasing her!” Heathertail meowed excitedly. “So if we follow the foxes . . .”

Crowfeather nodded. “We stand a good chance of finding Nightcloud.”

“But what if . . . ?” There was panic now in Breezepelt’s eyes, and his fur began to prickle in alarm. “What if they caught her?”

Heathertail wrapped her tail over his shoulders. “Calm down,” she mewed. “We know she isn’t dead, right? That other cat saw her. So somehow, she must have shaken off the foxes and ended up in the Twolegplace.”

Crowfeather said nothing. The young she-cat was right that Nightcloud wasn’t in StarClan, and they had a good idea that she had gone to the Twolegplace, however unlikely that seemed. That’s why we’re here, he told himself determinedly, and we’re not going home until we know for sure what happened to her, one way or the other.