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Firestar angled his ears toward the patrol. A moment later they disappeared into a reed bed and their scent slowly faded.
“Okay, let’s go,” Firestar meowed.
Leading the way, he leaped from one stepping-stone to another across the black, swiftly flowing water. He thought back to the floods of last leaf-bare, when he and Graystripe had almost drowned saving the lives of two of Mistyfoot’s kits. Leopardstar had conveniently forgotten that now, Firestar realized, as well as how the two ThunderClan warriors had helped the starving cats of RiverClan by taking them fresh-kill from their own hunting grounds.
But there was no point in thinking about that now. Reaching the far bank, Firestar slid into the shelter of a clump of reeds and checked once again that no enemy cats were near. All he could scent was the traces of the patrol, steadily growing fainter.
Treading softly, he made his way upriver toward the RiverClan camp. Graystripe and Ravenpaw followed, silent as shadows.
Suddenly a new scent drifted on the breeze. Firestar paused, his whiskers twitching. His eyes widened as he recognized the reek of carrion, crowfood that had rotted for days until its foul stench poisoned the air.
“Ugh! What’s that?” growled Ravenpaw, forgetting the need for silence.
Firestar swallowed the bile that rose into his throat. “I don’t know. I’d say it was a foxhole, but there’s no scent of fox.”
“It stinks, whatever it is,” Graystripe muttered. “Come on, Firestar, we need to keep going before some cat catches us.”
“No,” Firestar meowed. “I know you’re worried about your kits, Graystripe, but this is too strange. We have to investigate.”
A few tail-lengths ahead, a tiny stream flowed sluggishly into the main river. Firestar turned to follow it through more reeds. The stench grew stronger, and beneath the smell of crowfood he began to pick up the scent of many cats, a mixture of ShadowClan and RiverClan like the patrol. He halted and signaled for his friends to do the same as he began to make out noises from somewhere ahead: movement in the reeds and the voices of cats mingling together.
“What is this?” Graystripe whispered. “We’re nowhere near the camp.”
Firestar flicked the tip of his tail for silence. At least the stench would mask their ThunderClan scent and make it easier for them to stay hidden.
More cautiously than ever Firestar crept on again until the reeds began to thin out and he came to the edge of a clearing. Flattening himself against the damp ground he crawled as far forward as he dared and looked out.
At once he had to clamp his teeth hard to keep back a yowl of shock and anger. The stream ran along one side of the clearing, its near-stagnant waters clogged by the remains of fresh-kill carelessly flung there and left to rot. Cats crouched on the bank, tearing at prey. But that was not what had roused Firestar’s fury.
Opposite his hiding place, on the far side of the clearing was a vast hill of bones. They gleamed like stripped branches in the last of the watery daylight, some tiny shrew bones hardly bigger than teeth, others as big as the leg bone of a fox or a badger.
Icy trembling seized Firestar’s body. For a heartbeat he thought he was back in his dream at Fourtrees. He remembered the blood that had come oozing out of that hill of bones, and longed to flee in terror. But this was far worse than the dream because Firestar knew that it was happening now, in the real world. And crouched on top of the pile, his fur black against the sun-bleached remains, was Tigerstar, leader of the new united Clan.
Firestar forced himself to stay hidden. He had to find out what Tigerstar was doing. Graystripe and Ravenpaw crept forward to crouch beside him. Ravenpaw’s fur bristled, and Graystripe looked as if he were going to be sick.
After the first shock ebbed, Firestar examined the scene more closely. The hill was made up of only prey bones, not mixed with cat bones like the one in his dream. On one side of it stood the ShadowClan deputy, Blackfoot. On the other side was Leopardstar. Her gaze flicked nervously back and forth across the clearing. Firestar wondered if she regretted what had happened to her Clan, and he guessed that her ambition to make her Clan strong had blinded her to Tigerstar’s real nature. But whatever the former RiverClan leader felt, it was too late for her to go back now.
“I can’t see my kits,” Graystripe whispered, a breath of sound close to Firestar’s ear.
Mistyfoot and Stonefur weren’t there either, Firestar realized. In fact, most of the cats in the clearing came from ShadowClan, though he spotted the RiverClan warriors Mudfur and Heavystep. There was no sign of either medicine cat, and Firestar wondered if that was significant.
He was still watching, too stunned to know what to do next, when Tigerstar rose to his paws. A few small bones rattled down the side of the hill. The dark tabby’s eyes blazed in the fading light as he let out a triumphant yowl.
“Cats of TigerClan, gather here around the Bonehill for a Clan meeting!”
Immediately the cats in the clearing approached the hill, crouching low in respect. Others appeared from the reeds.
“He must have built that hill to look like the Highrock,” Ravenpaw murmured. “So he can look down on his Clan.”
The dark tabby waited until his warriors were all in place and then announced, “It is time for the trial to begin. Fetch the prisoners!”
Firestar exchanged a bewildered look with Graystripe. Where had Tigerstar found prisoners? Had he already mounted an attack on WindClan?
At Tigerstar’s order, a ShadowClan warrior—Jaggedtooth, who had been one of Brokentail’s rogues—vanished into the reeds. He returned a few moments later dragging another cat with him. At first Firestar did not recognize the skinny gray warrior, his fur unkempt and one ear shredded and bleeding. Then, as Jaggedtooth pushed him into the circle of cats beneath the Bonehill, Firestar realized it was Stonefur.
Firestar felt Graystripe stiffen beside him, and put out a warning paw for his friend not to give them away. Graystripe’s ears twitched but he stayed still and silent, watching.
The reeds parted again. This time Firestar knew at once the cat who stepped into the clearing, his fur sleek and his head raised proudly. It was Darkstripe. Traitor! Firestar thought, his belly clenching in anger.
More movement in the reeds heralded the arrival of another ShadowClan warrior who was shepherding two smaller cats, one a silver-gray tabby and the other with thick, gray fur. They were as thin as Stonefur, their steps unsteady as they staggered into the clearing. Huddling together in the shadow of the Bonehill, they looked around them with wide, scared eyes.
An icy chill gripped Firestar’s muscles. The two young cats were Graystripe’s kits, Featherpaw and Stormpaw.
CHAPTER 15
Graystripe growled deep in his thro a t and gathered himself to spring.
“No!” Firestar gasped, leaping on his friend before he could leave the shadow of the reeds. ?
?If Tigerstar sees us, we’re crowfood!”
On Graystripe’s other side Ravenpaw grabbed him by one shoulder. “Firestar’s right,” he hissed. “What chance would we have against all these cats?”
Graystripe writhed desperately, as if he hadn’t heard. “Let me go!” he snarled. “I’ll flay that piece of fox dung! I’ll rip his heart out!”
“No!” Firestar repeated in an agonized whisper. “We’ll be slaughtered if we show ourselves now. We won’t leave your kits, Graystripe, I promise we won’t, but we’ve got to wait for the right moment to rescue them.”
Graystripe went on struggling for a moment longer, then subsided with a grunt of agreement. Firestar let him go, nodding to Ravenpaw to do the same.
“Listen,” he murmured. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
While they had been holding Graystripe down, Tigerstar had begun to speak, his voice drowning the noise of their scuffle among the reeds.
“Cats of TigerClan,” he began, “you all know the hardships that we have to face. The cold of leaf-bare threatens us. Twolegs threaten us. The other two Clans in the forest, who have not yet realized the wisdom of joining with TigerClan, are a threat to us.”
Firestar’s tail-tip twitched in anger and he flashed a look at Graystripe. Tigerstar was the threat! All that ThunderClan and WindClan wanted was to get on with their lives in peace, according to the ancient traditions of StarClan and the warrior code.
But Graystripe’s burning gaze was fixed on his two kits, cowering at the base of the Bonehill; he was unaware of Firestar’s glance.
“Surrounded as we are by enemies,” Tigerstar went on, “we must be sure of the loyalty of our own warriors. There is no room in TigerClan for the halfhearted. No room for cats who might waver in battle, or worse still, turn on their own Clan mates. TigerClan will not tolerate traitors!”
Except the traitor who leads it, Firestar thought. Or Darkstripe,
who would have watched his own Clan be devoured by dogs.
