Эрин Хантер - The Fourth Apprentice

“Stop that right now!” Lionblaze growled, wading into the middle of the fight. “Mouse-brains! Do you want to get hurt before we even arrive?”

The two young cats broke apart and sat up; their fur was sticking out all over the place and coated with dust.

“I’d have won with the next move,” Tigerheart muttered.

“In your dreams!” Sedgewhisker gave him a parting flick over the ear with her tail before drawing back.

Dovepaw spotted Lionblaze giving Sedgewhisker a worried look; she seemed to be moving awkwardly, as if she’d wrenched her shoulder again. Then his gaze swiveled back to Tigerheart; the look he gave the younger warrior was unreadable.

Now what’s on his mind? Dovepaw wondered.

At the top of the valley, the land opened out into flatter, sparser woodland. The wind had dropped, and Dovepaw could hear the scraping and gnawing of the brown animals even more clearly than before. Her sense of urgency seemed to spread to the others, and Toadfoot, who was in the lead, picked up the pace until the cats were almost running along the stream bottom.

Lionblaze jumped onto the bank of the stream to look ahead and halted, his tail flicking up in surprise. “Look at that!”

“What?” Whitetail called up to him.

Lionblaze didn’t reply; he just signaled with his tail for the rest of the patrol to join him on the bank.

As she scrambled up beside him and looked, Dovepaw felt her heart start to pound. She had known from the beginning of their journey what they would find, and yet it was all so much clearer and more frightening now that she was faced with it.

Ahead of them, the stream led through a stretch of patchy woodland. Several of the trees had been lopped off neatly about two tail-lengths from the ground, the top of the stump rising to a sharp, splintered point. It looked as if an enormous animal had crashed along the streambed, flattening the trees on either side.

But that wouldn’t look so…so deliberate .

Stretching across the stream, clearly visible above the fallen trees, was an enormous barrier of logs. It rose in a curve like a hill, almost as big as a Twoleg nest.

Dovepaw shrank down, closing her eyes and pressing herself to the ground. The noise that surged through her was deafening: grunts and scratches, gnawing and scraping, the thump of heavy paws on wood. It took all the strength she had to control the sounds until she could cope with them and still stay aware of what was going on around her.

“So that’s what’s blocking the stream,” Rippletail whispered.

A moment of shocked quiet followed his words; it was broken by Petalfur. “We’ll have to push the logs away.”

“No, better drag them out of the stream,” Toadfoot argued. “Otherwise who knows where they’ll end up?”

“Whatever, as long as we let the water out,” meowed Lionblaze.

“And we’ll need to keep well back when the logs give way,” Whitetail pointed out.

“Wait.” Dovepaw’s voice was a hoarse croak as she struggled to her paws again. “The brown animals are still here. They built that barrier deliberately to trap the water.”

Another shocked silence greeted her words. Then Toadfoot shrugged. “We’ll just have to chase them away, then.”

Dovepaw was sure it wouldn’t be as easy as that, but she couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.

“Don’t be scared,” Tigerheart whispered, padding up to stand beside her, with his pelt brushing hers. “I’ll look after you.”

Dovepaw felt too shaken to protest. She followed Lionblaze as he beckoned the rest of the patrol back into the cover of the streambed.

“I suggest that we wait until after dark before we attack,” he meowed. “First we need to scout around on both sides of the logs, because right now the brown animals have the advantage of knowing the territory much better than we do.”

“That’s a good idea,” Whitetail commented.

“And we have to remember that each Clan should fight to its strengths,” Lionblaze added. “We—”

“I’m confident of my strength, Lionblaze,” Toadfoot interrupted. “You just worry about yours.”

Lionblaze held the ShadowClan warrior’s gaze for a couple of heartbeats, but he didn’t rise to the veiled challenge. Dovepaw was unnerved by the tension between the two cats, as well as the anxiety she could sense from the rest of the patrol. They couldn’t argue now! More than ever, they needed to work together to free the water.

Whitetail took the lead as the cats crept out of the streambed and up a slope through the trees, circling around the fallen logs. She paused at the first of the lopped-off trees and gave it a curious sniff. “Big teeth,” she murmured to Lionblaze, angling her ears toward the spiky top of the stump, where the jaw marks of the brown animals were clearly visible.

Lionblaze replied with a cautious nod, while Dovepaw’s belly churned at the thought of those teeth meeting in her pelt. The scent of the brown animals was everywhere; Dovepaw had been aware of it before now, but the reek here was much stronger, a mixture of musk and fish.

“Hey, they smell a bit like RiverClan!” Tigerheart whispered with a playful gleam in his eyes.

“Don’t let Rippletail or Petalfur hear you say that,” Dovepaw warned him, in no mood for jokes.

Following Whitetail up the slope, she gradually became aware of something else up ahead. Twolegs! She nearly called out the word, but she realized that she would be in trouble again, trying to explain how she knew. There are green pelt-dens, too, like the ones on the ShadowClan border .

Putting on a spurt, she caught up to Whitetail and hissed, “I think I can scent Twolegs.”

“Really?” The white she-cat halted and opened her jaws to taste the air. “Yes, I think you might be right.” Turning to the rest of the patrol, she added, “Twolegs up ahead. Be careful.”

The cats padded on more slowly, using the logs and stumps for cover. At the top, Whitetail signaled with her tail for the others to crouch down, and they crawled the last few tail-lengths on their bellies. Gazing out from the shelter of a clump of grass, Dovepaw made out several pelt-dens in the clearing ahead. A full-grown Twoleg was sitting outside the entrance to one of them, while two others were examining something on the ground a few fox-lengths away. There didn’t seem to be any of the young Twolegs playing about, like the ones in the other clearing.

Just as well , Dovepaw thought with a sigh of relief.

“What do you think the Twolegs are doing here?” Rippletail asked, getting up to pad a little farther forward. “Do you think they have anything to do with the brown animals?”

“Maybe they’ve come to watch them,” Petalfur guessed.

Around the edges of the open space were hard, black Twoleg things, with long black tendrils trailing along the ground. More of the Twolegs were gathered around them, muttering and occasionally touching the black things, which made sharp clicking sounds. Dovepaw bent down to lick one of the tendrils that was snaking past her, and jumped back at the bitter taste, which was similar to the stench on the Thunderpath.

“Hey, look!” Tigerheart padded up to her. “Some of those Twolegs have fur on their face! They look weird.”

“Twolegs are weird,” Toadfoot pointed out sourly from just behind him. “We don’t have to go on about it.”

“I wonder what they have in that den,” Sedgewhisker murmured, peering around the trunk of a tree. “It smells so good!”

Dovepaw gave a long sniff, her nose twitching as she picked up the scent from the farthest pelt-den. It smelled like some sort of fresh-kill, though it was mixed up with Twoleg scents as well. Her belly rumbled. She was hungry enough to eat anything.