Эрин Хантер - A Forest Divided

Gorse Fur and Wind Runner exchanged a startled glance, as if they hadn’t expected such a fierce reply. Then their gazes became more thoughtful.

“We can’t let the fox keep coming around, getting closer and closer,” Gorse Fur mewed. To Slate, he added, “Do you really think you can kill it?”

A strong sense of purpose flooded through Slate. Now she realized why she hadn’t let herself die on the moor after Gorse Fur found her. It was because I need to kill that fox! “I will avenge my littermate,” she assured Gorse Fur.

“I’ll go with her,” Wind Runner told Gorse Fur, authority in her voice. “I’m the stronger fighter.

You stay with the kits.”

Gorse Fur hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. “Okay. But please be careful.”

“We will,” Wind Runner replied briskly. “Slate, we’ll leave before dawn tomorrow. Better get a good rest before then.”

“Wind Runner!” Dust Muzzle’s voice rose from behind a rock. “Moth Flight bit my tail!”

Wind Runner heaved a sigh. “Kits!” With a whisk of her tail, she was gone.

Gorse Fur was left with Slate, his green gaze fixed on her. “Thank you,” he meowed, his voice heavy with meaning. “You know,” he added, “even if you kill the fox, I can’t guarantee that Wind Runner will let you stay here.”

“I don’t want to stay here,” Slate retorted, surprised.

Gorse Fur nodded and walked off.

As she watched him go, Slate realized for the first time that she wasn’t sure she meant what she had said.

Slate felt a paw prodding her shoulder and opened her eyes to see Wind Runner standing over her.

“It’s time,” the brown she-cat meowed.

Stretching her jaws in a vast yawn, Slate stumbled to her paws. Overhead the stars were growing pale at the approach of dawn. She shivered in the chilly breeze that whispered over the moor.

“The fox was skulking around here again last night,” Wind Runner continued as she led Slate between two boulders and out onto the moor. “I’ve picked up its scent.”

“A rabbit without a nose couldn’t miss that stink,” Slate muttered as the rank smell caught her in the throat. “It should be easy to track.”

Side by side the two she-cats followed the fox’s trail across the moor. White mist wreathed over the ground, and the tough moorland grass was heavy with dew. The moisture damped down the fox scent, and sometimes they lost the trail altogether where the fox had crossed a stream, but they quickly picked it up again. The fox was heading directly toward the forest.

“That’s where its den must be,” Slate murmured, pausing and raising her head to survey the dark barrier of trees that lay ahead.

Wind Runner paused at Slate’s side, shifting her paws uncomfortably. Slate turned toward her, aware that the brown she-cat wanted to say something but was finding it hard.

“We’re both grateful to you,” Wind Runner mewed at last. “But I’m not sure why you’re doing this. You know we can’t give you anything in return.”

“I don’t want anything,” Slate responded. “Only to kill that fox.”

Though she said nothing to Wind Runner, Slate admitted to herself that she didn’t expect to survive the fight. She wasn’t even sure that she cared. Killing the fox and protecting the kits—and yes, Wind Runner and Gorse Fur—would be enough. It will be a noble death. And I won’t have to go on trying to cope in a world without Cricket.

But as they continued toward the trees, a tiny thorn of doubt still stuck in her heart.

The sky was milky pale with dawn by the time Slate and Wind Runner reached the forest, and a golden glow on the horizon showed them where the sun would rise. But shadows still lay deep under the trees. The fox scent led the two cats around a bramble thicket and then as far as a gaping black hole among the roots of an oak tree.

“It’s in there,” Slate murmured, gagging on the hot reek that flowed out of the den.

“Now what do we do?” Wind Runner twitched her tail angrily. “I don’t mind chasing rabbits down their burrows, but I’m not going in there.”

“We have to get the fox to come out,” Slate meowed, thinking hard. “I know what to do. You go and hide in that clump of bracken.”

Wind Runner hesitated as if she was going to ask a question, then gave a single lash of her tail and slid out of sight among the ferns.

Once she had gone, Slate collapsed on one side just outside the den. “Help me! Help me!” she whimpered. “I’ve hurt my paw…”

She knew that the fox wouldn’t be able to understand her, but she hoped that the pain and fear in her voice would be clear enough to entice it into the open. Her heart was pounding so hard that she thought the fox must be able to hear that too. I’ve never been so scared.

At first there was no movement in the black mouth of the den. But after a few moments Slate heard a scuffling sound, and a sharp snout poked into the open, sniffing. Then the fox’s whole head appeared, its malignant eyes fixed on her.

Slate let out another piteous cry. But as the fox launched itself toward her, she rolled away and sprang to her paws, hissing defiance. In the same heartbeat Wind Runner exploded out of the bracken and hurled herself at the fox. Slate leaped in to attack it from the other side.

For a few moments the fox seemed bewildered, too surprised to fight back. But it quickly recovered, snapping at Wind Runner with all the viciousness Slate remembered.

Slate jerked back, too scared of getting her paws, or worse, her neck, caught between the fox’s jaws to battle with it up close. She could see that Wind Runner shared her fear, darting in to rake her claws across the creature’s pelt, then leaping back out of range. Slate concentrated, waiting until

Wind Runner had drawn the fox in one direction, then attacking from the other. She swiped at the fox’s hindquarters, but it whipped around and snapped at her, forcing her back.

Slate waited until the fox turned away again. Then she lurched forward, stretching out her foreclaws to dig them deep into the fox’s side, trying to open up a gash like the one it had made in her belly. The fox snarled and turned, stretching its jaws wide to snap at her. Slate ducked aside, wincing as she felt the fox tear out a chunk of her neck fur. She staggered backward, warm blood running down her neck, as Wind Runner threw herself at the fox again.

To her horror Slate saw the fox raise a forepaw and slam it across Wind Runner’s head. Wind Runner let out a yowl of pain and tumbled to the ground, rolling over and over, her legs and tail waving helplessly.

As the fox loomed over Wind Runner, Slate recovered her balance and charged forward, expecting to draw her enemy away. But the fox did not react. Its eye on the side facing her was cloudy and half-closed. It’s the eye Cricket hurt, Slate realized, remembering her brother’s claws ripping at the fox’s face. The fox couldn’t see her attacking from the side because of its wounded eye.

That’s the key to defeating it!

Slate took a deep breath, then flung herself at the fox from that side, keeping low to stay out of the way of its vicious jaws. As her claws sank into its fur, the half-blind fox turned to meet her, but Slate stayed out of its line of vision by attacking from under its jaws. She had a clear path to its neck, and plunged her foreclaws into the softer fur, tearing at the fox’s throat with every scrap of strength she could muster.

Panicking, the fox thrashed and snarled, desperate to escape Slate’s grip. Wind Runner scrambled back onto her paws and lunged at the fox from the other side. Together the two she-cats forced the fox to the ground, its struggles growing weaker.