Эрин Хантер - The Fourth Apprentice

“Hi there!” the white she-cat greeted them, running up to Lionblaze to touch his ear with her nose. “It’s great to see you again.” Suddenly she backed off a pace, her lip curling as if she’d scented something foul. “You’re not going to make me eat fur and bones, are you?”

“No,” Lionblaze mewed. “We’ve come to ask for your help.”

“Great!” Snowdrop purred. “What do you want us to do?”

“We can fight, watch!” Jigsaw added. He leaped at Snowdrop, trying to wrap his forepaws around her neck. Snowdrop reared up on her hind paws and lost her balance as she aimed a blow at Jigsaw’s ear. Both cats toppled over onto the grass in a heap of fur.

Seville rolled his eyes.

“Er…that’s great,” Lionblaze meowed. “But we don’t need you to fight, actually. We need you to dismantle a dam.”

Snowdrop sat up, shaking scraps of grass off her pelt. “What’s a dam?”

Lionblaze described the huge mound of logs blocking the stream. “We fought the beavers, but they were too strong for us,” he explained. “So some of us are going to lure them away while the rest take the dam apart and free the water.”

Jigsaw blinked. “Will it be dangerous?”

Lionblaze nodded. “Yes,” he mewed.

The black-and-brown tabby’s eyes gleamed brighter still. “Good! We’re awfully bored, lying around here all day.”

Dovepaw’s conscience pricked her like a thorn in her pad. “This isn’t going to be fun,” she warned the kittypets. “A—a cat died.”

Snowdrop gasped and Jigsaw’s neck fur stood on end.

“But we won’t be fighting the beavers again,” Lionblaze reassured them, with a glare at his apprentice.

Dovepaw met his gaze. “We can’t ask them to come with us unless they know what might happen.” But what if they don’t come? she asked herself anxiously. What will we do then?

“We’ll come, won’t we, Jigsaw?” Snowdrop meowed.

Jigsaw nodded, though he looked less certain.

Seville let out a grunt and rose to his paws, arching his back in a long stretch. “I can’t let you young ’uns go off on your own,” he growled. “Who knows what you might get up to? I’ll come, too.”

“Thank you,” Dovepaw mewed. “Our Clans thank you.”

“Follow us.” Jigsaw bounced on his paws. “We know a quick way back to the stream.”

Dovepaw was amazed at how confident the kittypets were as they traveled through the Twolegplace. When they came to a Thunderpath, Jigsaw jumped right over a sleeping monster, leaving dusty pad marks on its gleaming snout. Seville and Snowdrop followed, then turned to wait for the Clan cats on the other side of the Thunderpath.

“Come on!” Seville called. “I thought you were in a hurry!”

Lionblaze gave Dovepaw a sidelong look. “Are we going to let those kittypets think we’re scared of monsters?”

“No way,” Dovepaw replied. Even if we are!

Lionblaze bunched his muscles and leaped up onto the monster’s hindquarters. Dovepaw followed, trying not to flinch as her pads struck the smooth, hot surface. She jumped onto its back, then down onto its snout. In a heartbeat, she was on the ground, panting with relief. Glancing back once she reached the other side of the Thunderpath, she realized that the monster hadn’t woken up, even after five cats had leaped over it.

Maybe monsters are stupid .

By now Dovepaw was completely lost, but she didn’t have time to stop and sense the direction they should be going. Then she spotted a line of trees, and through them the streambed. They emerged from the maze of the Twolegplace a few fox-lengths upstream from the place with the rabbits.

“Which way now?” Seville asked.

“Just keep following the stream,” Lionblaze replied. He took the lead, picking up the pace until he was racing up the channel.

“Hey, take it easy,” Jigsaw protested, wincing as he held up a paw. “These stones are sharp.”

“Okay, sorry.” Lionblaze slowed to a steady trot.

Dovepaw brought up the rear to make sure that none of the kittypets was falling behind. She could feel the tension rising as they drew closer to the dam—not just from the kittypets, from the air itself, as if something huge was about to happen. Above them, clouds were piling up in the sky, covering the sun, and a claw scratch of lightning flickered on the horizon. As they padded through the copse, Dovepaw could see how spooked the kittypets were, jumping whenever the branches rattled in the rising wind.

Putting on a spurt, she caught up to Jigsaw and fell into step beside him. “Are you okay?”

The tom’s only reply was a tense nod.

I hope that’s true , Dovepaw thought. Guilt and fear squirmed beneath her fur.

Oh, StarClan, am I taking more cats into a battle from which they’ll never return?

Lionblaze jumped up onto the bank of the stream and turned to look back down at his ragged patrol. Seville, Snowdrop, and Jigsaw were standing with their mouths wide open as they stared up at the dam.

“That’s seriously huge! ” Jigsaw breathed.

Snowdrop blinked at Lionblaze. “You really think we can move that?”

Lionblaze nodded, trying to hide his own doubts and give the kittypets confidence. “With all of us working together, yes, I do.”

“Come on,” Dovepaw urged them, leaping up to stand beside Lionblaze. “Let’s go find the others.”

Lionblaze led the way up the slope and into the clearing where he had left the other Clan cats. Pushing through the undergrowth into the open, he halted, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of a pile of logs in the middle of the clearing. Sedgewhisker was just heaving a branch onto the top of the stack, before leaping lightly down.

“Hi, you’re back,” she panted.

“I figured if we could stack branches, we could work out how to pull them apart,” Toadfoot explained, padding over to meet Lionblaze. His pelt was covered with scraps of twig and bark and he was breathing hard.

“Good idea,” Lionblaze meowed admiringly. “You’re doing a great job.”

At the opposite side of the clearing Petalfur was dragging a branch that was far, far bigger than she was. She didn’t stop until she reached the stack of logs and pushed her branch up to the foot of it. Then she limped wearily across the clearing to join Lionblaze and the others; her eyes as she gazed at the new arrivals were old and full of determination.

As Tigerheart and Whitetail trotted up with Woody, Lionblaze began to introduce the kittypets.

“I’m not a Clan cat,” Woody explained. “I’m just passing through.”

“I think I’ve seen you before, in the woods,” Seville meowed; he looked relieved to meet a cat who was even slightly familiar.

“We’ve got to discuss the plan,” Toadfoot announced as soon as the introductions were over. “We need to decide—”

“Hunt first,” Whitetail interrupted with a flick of her tail. “We can’t do this if we don’t eat and rest for a bit.”

Toadfoot looked briefly offended at being contradicted, then gave the WindClan she-cat a nod. “Okay,” he agreed. “But we’d better be quick about it.”

To Lionblaze’s relief, there was still plenty of prey in the woods, and it wasn’t long before the cats had gathered in the clearing again, crouching to eat their catch.

“We’ve already eaten, thanks,” Seville mewed when Whitetail offered him a mouse.

Snowdrop drew back, her green eyes wide with horror, but Jigsaw looked cautiously interested, and he leaned over to sniff the squirrel Dovepaw had caught.