Эрин Хантер - Firestar’s Quest

“We’re a Clan now,” Clovertail declared, “and this is where we belong. We’ve got to fight for that.”

Firestar hauled himself to his feet, digging his claws into the branch. His head was clearing now, and the strength of his next life flowed into his limbs—the strength of the SkyClan ancestor who had brought him here believing that he would not fail.

“I honor your courage,” he meowed. “And I’ll fight with you. You can have all my lives and all my strength if it will help you beat these rats.”

He was aware of Sandstorm’s ears pricking in surprise, but he meant every word. This was the right thing to do by the warrior code. For tonight, he was not the leader of ThunderClan, but a member of SkyClan.

“But what are we going to do?” Patchfoot asked in a small voice.

Firestar looked down. The tree was surrounded by sinuous rat bodies, their sharp eyes fixed on the warriors who had taken refuge in the branches. Cherrypaw and Sparrowpaw still stood at its foot, ready to spring up to join their Clanmates if the rats attacked.

But the rats seemed to be in no hurry. Firestar could tell they thought the battle was over, and they could wipe out the remaining cats as slowly as they wished.

“The rats are acting together,” he thought out loud. “Like a swarm of bees or a pack of dogs. Last night they stopped attacking us and all turned tail at once. Something is controlling them. They must be taking orders from the leading rat.”

“So kill him,” Sharpclaw hissed, flexing his claws, “and the rest of them will flee.”

“I hope so,” Firestar replied grimly.

“That’s all very well,” Patchfoot meowed. “But how do we tell which one is the leader? They all look the same to me.”

Firestar thought back to the last heartbeats of his previous life, when he had faced the rat leader inside the barn. His neck fur bristled at the memory of the malignant eyes and the hoarse voice telling him to die.

“Only the leader can speak the tongue of cats,” he meowed. “If we can make him talk to us, we’ll know which one he is.”

“And then…” Sharpclaw slashed one paw, claws extended, through the air.

Firestar glanced around. The SkyClan warriors were ready for action now, their eyes eager, their wounds and weariness forgotten. Even Shortwhisker seemed to have pulled back from the brink of his panic.

“We’ll have to climb down,” he began. “The rats will sit there forever if we stay up this tree.”

Taking the lead, he scrambled down to the cold, hard ground, landing beside the two apprentices. The rest of the Clan followed him in silence and stood gazing out across the mass of rats. Firestar noticed that the SkyClan descendants—Cherrypaw and Sparrowpaw, Shortwhisker and Sharpclaw—moved into position on the outside of the little group, as if they meant to protect their Clanmates who couldn’t escape up the tree so easily.

As they descended, a ripple passed through the crowd of rats, and they edged a little nearer. Firestar raised his head and faced them.

“You’re brave enough when you’re all together,” he taunted them. “But I bet you wouldn’t be so brave on your own. I don’t suppose even your clever leader would come out and face me.”

Not a rat moved.

“Cowards!” Sharpclaw sneered. “Crow-food-eating, skulking vermin!”

“Come and fight!” Firestar hurled the challenge against a wall of silence. Panic began to prickle in his fur. The leading rat was obviously clever enough not to show himself.

The cats pressed their backs to the tree as the rats crept a little nearer. Another few heartbeats, Firestar thought, and they would surge forward. The SkyClan cats would fight on for a little while, but sooner or later they would be overwhelmed. Once more SkyClan would become nothing more than a memory. What can I do? he asked himself, anguished.

Then a familiar scent drifted around him, and his paws tingled. Spottedleaf? He glanced from side to side, but there was no sign of the tortoiseshell she-cat. Only a soft voice that murmured in his ear: Not many, but one .

Then the sense of her presence faded. Wait! Firestar protested in his head. I don’t understand! How could Spottedleaf say that there were not many rats here?

He stared out at his enemies, the moonlight washing over them so that their bodies merged together like ripples on a lake. And as he watched the tide ebb and flow, he began to realize what Spottedleaf had meant. He had thought of the rats as a swarm of bees or a dog pack, taking their orders from their leader, but Spottedleaf had shown him it was more than that. These creatures were like a single enemy; the individual rats had no minds of their own. They took their orders from one rat alone, passed from body to body in visible signals, a twitch of fur or flick of tail, the brush of one flank against another. If he watched the ripples, they should lead him to the rat he was looking for.

The rats edged a little closer. Firestar was aware of Sandstorm beside him, her pelt brushing his, her claws digging into the tree root where she stood poised to spring. Hardly daring to breathe, he stared out at the rats, knowing that they could strike at any moment. He forced himself to stop looking at one pair of eyes here, a snakelike tail there, and studied them like the surface of a single lake.

Icy claws pricked his spine. Sure enough, he could make out tiny stirrings of movement circling a central point, the place from where the leader’s silent commands rippled outward. And at that central point, a single rat gazed toward the besieged cats.

Firestar narrowed his eyes. There was no time to explain what he was doing to the rest of the patrol. He had just one chance, one chance to ensure that he had not traveled here in vain, and SkyClan would live on. Unsheathing his claws, he leaped, legs outstretched, into the middle of the mass of rats.

Horrified wails rose from the cats behind him. He heard Sandstorm screech, “Firestar!”

Her voice was drowned out by the single shriek that rose from the throats of every rat, and they rushed upon him like a thick brown wave. But Firestar’s claws struck their target, tearing at the throat of the rat at the center of the tide. He gazed into the small, hate-filled eyes, and saw their hatred change to terror before the light faded from them. The rat’s head dropped back and its body went limp.

For a heartbeat Firestar stood still, his paws sticky with blood. Rats milled around him, squeaking and hissing in confusion. With their leader dead, they did not know what to do next.

“Follow me! Attack!” The yowl came from Sharpclaw, and suddenly Firestar’s Clanmates were all around him, claws lashing at their enemies. Gibbering in terror, the rats fled back toward the barn, scrabbling at the shiny walls in their efforts to get in and hide. The SkyClan cats raced past Firestar, dealing a death blow to any rat too slow to get out of their way.

“Stay away from us!” Sharpclaw screeched after them.

“The gorge is ours. We’ll kill any rats who set paw there!”

Leafdapple halted at the gap, stopping the rest of the SkyClan cats from following the rats inside. “Let them go,” she meowed. “They’re not dangerous anymore. Not now.”

She padded back to Firestar, who still stood over the body of his dead enemy, and bowed her head in deepest gratitude.

“The battle is won. Thanks to you, SkyClan is safe.”

When the rats had fled, Firestar ventured into the barn with Sharpclaw and Leafdapple. Two or three rats were still visible, sniffing at the bodies of their dead companions, but when they spotted the cats they let out squeals of alarm and scurried into the shelter of the Twoleg rubbish at the far end of the barn.