Эрин Хантер - The Apprentice's Quest

Crouching down, she began to creep up on the nearest bird. But there was no cover, and the bird spotted her as she pounced. It spun around to face her, flapping its wings and letting out a series of harsh squawks.

The rest of the birds scattered, running across the grass as if they didn’t know how to fly. But the bird Sparkpaw had tried to hunt stretched its neck out and attacked her with furious pecks. Sparkpaw leaped backward, hissing defiantly.

“It looks like you’re the prey,” Needlepaw meowed, her voice full of laughter and her eyes gleaming.

“Leave them,” Sandstorm ordered, gesturing with her tail for Sparkpaw to rejoin the group. “It’s not worth risking injury. We’ll hunt when we get past this place.”

“Yes, we need to keep going,” Alderpaw added, urgency pricking his paws as he remembered the desperate cries of the SkyClan cats.

Looking sulky, Sparkpaw obeyed. She glared at Needlepaw as the ShadowClan cat let out a stream of squawks in imitation of the weird birds. “Stop messing around, you crazy furball,” she muttered.

But Needlepaw seemed not to understand the need to move on quickly. Alderpaw’s irritation with her rose as she poked her nose into every hole and clump of long grass. She halted at the sight of another strange creature, smaller than the first, but with the same hard, pointed paws. It had curving horns and a long wisp of hair dangling from its chin. Alderpaw shivered at the sight of its eerie eyes.

It let out a high-pitched, drawn-out cry, and Needlepaw at once tried to imitate it, snorting with laughter at her own weird meows.

“Whenever you’ve finished… ,” Alderpaw snarled, giving her a hard shove.

“Keep your fur on!” Needlepaw retorted.

She was still bouncing around like a kit on its first day out of the nursery when the cats approached a hedge. Beyond it, rows of tall, yellow-brown plants stretched into the distance. Alderpaw could hear a faint rumbling and noticed a haze hanging in the air.

“There may be a Thunderpath on the other side of this,” he mewed.

Sandstorm nodded. “I still think this is the way we should go.”

Without hesitating, Alderpaw began to push his way through the hedge; fortunately the bushes weren’t too thick. “Sandstorm, watch out for your shoulder,” he warned her.

Sandstorm brushed through without mishap, while Cherryfall and Molewhisker followed.

Sparkpaw pushed Needlepaw ahead of her and brought up the rear. “I swear by StarClan,” Sparkpaw hissed as she emerged, “if you behave like this for much longer, I’m going to claw your ears off.”

Needlepaw swiped playfully at her. “You can always try.”

“Let’s go,” Alderpaw mewed curtly.

He headed out into the stretch of yellow-brown plants. Their stalks were hard and scratchy, and the ground underpaw was hard, bare earth. At least Needlepaw seemed to have calmed down as she slid through the gaps between the plants.

The rumbling sound Alderpaw could hear grew louder, and he guessed that they might be coming to the Thunderpath. Then he realized that the plants on one side were thinning.

Veering in that direction, he poked his head out of cover. His companions clustered around him, peering over his shoulder.

There was no

Thunderpath.

Instead

Alderpaw saw a stretch of ground where the plants had been cut down, leaving only stubble behind. Now he discovered where the rumbling came from: a huge monster with spinning jaws was moving straight toward them, slicing off the next swath of plants and tossing them into its belly! All around it the air was full of dust.

Alderpaw felt as if his whole body had been suddenly drenched in icy water. “It’s eating the field!” he gasped out.

“And it’ll eat us!” Sandstorm meowed. “It could gulp down all six of us at once. Run!”

Alderpaw whipped around and began to race through the plants, bobbing and weaving as gaps opened up. Behind him he heard Cherryfall yowl, “Stay together!”

Glancing over his shoulder, Alderpaw could spot all the other cats racing along with him.

The tall plants blocked his view of the monster, but he knew it was close—the noise it made seemed loud enough to rattle the air. We have to keep running!

As he fled, Alderpaw realized that the hard ground had given way to soft mud that clung to his paws and gave off a terrible smell. He was too scared to wonder what it was, or to do anything except keep on pelting away from the monster.

Alderpaw was glancing behind him again when he suddenly crashed into something hard but springy that bounced him back a tail-length into the plants. Regaining his balance, he looked up and let out a groan.

“No! I don’t believe it!”

He was facing another fence made out of the shiny tendrils with the spikes along the top.

His companions gathered around him.

“We’ll have to climb it,” Molewhisker meowed, “or the monster will get us.”

“Right.” Sparkpaw took the lead, climbing rapidly up the fence and hurling herself down on the other side into soft grass. “Hurry!” she urged the others.

Needlepaw went next. While Alderpaw was waiting for his turn, he noticed that some of the foul-smelling mud had got into Sandstorm’s wound, which was red and swollen now.

Alderpaw was certain that it was infected. And Sandstorm was standing with her head lowered and her chest heaving; she was clearly exhausted, much more so than her age and the race through the plants would explain.

It must be her wound, Alderpaw told himself. I can just feel it. With an inward start of surprise he realized that this must be part of what being a good medicine cat was all about. I can’t just see that she should probably rest; I can tell that she needs to.

“You ought to rest,” he mewed to Sandstorm.

Sandstorm raised her head and gave him an annoyed look. “I’m an elder,” she retorted. “I’ve been around for a long time. I know I’m okay.”

Alderpaw had heard that argument before, and this time he wasn’t about to accept it. “No!” he meowed sharply.

Sandstorm’s eyes stretched wide in outrage.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Sorry,” Alderpaw responded. “It’s just that I can tell how tired you are. I’m your medicine cat, and I’m saying you need to rest.”

The ginger she-cat hesitated for a moment.

“Maybe you’re right. But let’s get across this StarClan-cursed fence first.”

She began to climb without waiting for a reply. Alderpaw could see how hard it was for her to haul herself upward. When she reached the top, she toppled rather than jumped onto the far side, letting out a screech as she fell.

Alderpaw scrambled over the fence without even thinking about it, and ran to Sandstorm.

His eyes widened with horror as he saw her wound pooling with blood. She must have torn it on one of those spikes!

“That does it,” he growled. “We rest now .”

Turning to the others, he added, “Find me some cobwebs.”

The cats scattered to search among the bushes that were dotted here and there across the grassland. While he waited for them to return, Alderpaw licked the clinging mud out of Sandstorm’s wound. The old cat just lay on her side, panting.

When his companions returned, Alderpaw packed the wound with cobwebs, but blood still kept oozing out of it. He gazed down at Sandstorm, trying to ignore his rising panic.

Her wound is worse now, and she’s weaker. How will she fight off the infection?

Cherryfall touched him on the shoulder.

“It’s getting late,” she meowed. “Should we hunt?”

Alderpaw looked up, startled. In his anxiety he hadn’t noticed that the sun had gone down and the shadows of night were gathering.