Warriors: Power Of Three 5 - Long Shadows (12 page)

“Get to the trees,” Jaypaw whispered.

Lionblaze was just about to creep into position when Flamepaw hissed, “Wait! That’s not Blackfoot!”

Lionblaze froze. The lower branches of a bush at the edge of the marsh waved up and down; then a dark brown tom emerged, sniffing the air suspiciously.

Dawnpaw’s claws dug into the ground. “Toadfoot!”

“Fox dung!” Jaypaw spat.

Flamepaw’s eyes stretched wide with dismay. “Now what do we do?”

For a few heartbeats Lionblaze felt as helpless as a piece of prey under a warrior’s claws. He guessed that the ShadowClan warrior was following the scent trail left by Tigerpaw and Hollyleaf. What would they do if Blackfoot turned up now? Then he gave himself a mental shake. This was no time to panic!

“Flamepaw,” he whispered, signaling with a twitch of his ears. “Creep around the marsh on that side, and make sure Toadfoot doesn’t see you. I’ll go this way. When I leap on him, you come and help.”

The apprentice gave him a tense nod and crept away, his belly f lat to the ground. Lionblaze headed in the opposite direction, and took cover in a clump of bracken a couple of tail-lengths from Toadfoot. He caught a glimpse of Flamepaw’s ginger pelt under a bush opposite.

The ShadowClan warrior stalked forward, an aggressive light in his eyes. A low growl came from his throat. “I know you’re there. Come out!”

“Now!” Lionblaze yowled.

He leaped out of the clump of bracken and bowled over the astonished Toadfoot. At the same moment Flamepaw hurtled across the boggy ground and flung himself on top of his Clanmate. Lionblaze pinned Toadfoot down with both forepaws on his belly.

Toadfoot battered at Lionblaze with strong hindpaws. His forepaws flailed, scoring down Flamepaw’s neck and shoulder, but the apprentice held on, stretching himself across Toadfoot’s neck and shoulders.

“Get him into cover!” Lionblaze ordered.

Together he and Flamepaw dragged the struggling ShadowClan warrior behind the clump of bracken. Toadfoot lashed out with his claws, landing a painful blow on Lionblaze’s f lank, but he couldn’t free himself. His screeches of fury were cut off when Flamepaw pushed his head to the ground and kept a paw over his jaws.

As soon as the thrashing and yowling stopped, Lionblaze heard the sounds of more cats approaching through the trees.

Breathing heavily, he raised his head. Through the bracken fronds he could see Tigerpaw with Littlecloud pacing alongside him, and Blackfoot a tail-length or so behind.

The ShadowClan leader paused and looked suspiciously around him. “I heard something,” he growled.

“Some cat hunting, maybe,” Tigerpaw lied easily. “This way, Blackfoot. Flamepaw and Dawnpaw are waiting by the border.”

At the sound of his leader’s voice, Toadfoot heaved himself up in another attempt to escape. Lionblaze thrust him down again.

“Keep quiet if you want to save your Clan!” he hissed, planting a paw on Toadfoot’s neck.

Toadfoot glared at him furiously, but couldn’t move.

While Lionblaze and Flamepaw were fighting with Toadfoot, Jaypaw and Dawnpaw had slipped back into the marsh and taken up their positions by the saplings they had loos-ened. Almost covered by the mud, they were hardly visible to any cat who wasn’t looking for them.

The thin branches were waving as though the trees could fall at any moment. Tigerpaw led Blackfoot and Littlecloud forward as if he was going to skirt the marsh at the very edge.

Lionblaze caught a glimpse of Hollyleaf creeping from behind a gorse bush and plunging into the mud to help Dawnpaw.

His chest heaved. Now! Now!

Jaypaw raised his tail and slapped it down on the surface of the mud; then he thrust at the trunk of his tree with outstretched forepaws. Hollyleaf and Dawnpaw pushed their tree. Slowly the trunks tilted. There was a sucking noise and the surface of the marsh churned with brown bubbles.

Blackfoot let out a yowl of alarm, but it was too late to flee.

The trees crashed down, their branches locking together as they fell, the roots rising out of the mud and lashing the air like enormous tails. Peering through the bracken, Lionblaze spotted Tigerpaw scrambling through the branches and taking refuge underneath one of the trunks. He could see Blackfoot, clawing vainly at a mesh of twigs; for a moment he was worried that Littlecloud was hurt, but then he heard the medicine cat’s voice.

“Blackfoot? Are you okay?”

“No, I feel as if my pelt’s torn off,” the ShadowClan leader growled. “What happened? Where’s Tigerpaw?”

“I can’t see him. Tigerpaw!”

Jaypaw hauled himself out of the mud and balanced among the roots of the nearest tree, out of sight of the trapped cats.

“Tigerpaw has vanished . . .” he whispered, loud enough for the ShadowClan cats to hear.

“What? Who’s that?” Blackfoot demanded.

“I am one of the spirits you have denied. More cats than Tigerpaw will be lost if you go on rejecting your warrior ancestors.” Jaypaw’s whisper became more intense. “The forest will fall. . . .”

“What do you mean?” Lionblaze could just make out Blackfoot’s face, his lips drawn back in a snarl, and Littlecloud peering out of the branches beside him. The medicine cat’s eyes were wide with awe.

“A StarClan warrior is speaking to us!” he meowed.

Toadfoot started struggling again; Lionblaze crouched down on top of him while Flamepaw lay across his neck and shoulders, keeping a paw over his jaws. Keeping the writhing cat pinned down, Lionblaze peered out from hiding.

Blackfoot was clawing furiously at the branches. “Supersti-tious nonsense!” he spat, though Lionblaze thought there was uncertainty in his voice.

“We must listen,” Littlecloud insisted. “StarClan has a message for us. What if they’ve taken Tigerpaw and we never see him again?”

Blackfoot let out a snort of contempt. “If that’s a StarClan warrior, let it show itself.”

Lionblaze’s belly churned. Jaypaw wasn’t a warrior with stars in his fur, just an undersized tabby apprentice, covered with mud. If Blackfoot wouldn’t believe him without seeing him, their plan would fail.

“The forest will fall . . .” Jaypaw repeated. Lionblaze could just see him, crouched among the roots, his muscles tensed and his claws digging into the bark. “The trees will die. Your warriors will be scattered, and when they die they will never find a place among the stars.”

It’s not working, Lionblaze thought hopelessly. Blackfoot still wasn’t listening, just making more and more frenzied efforts to claw his way into the open. “Show yourself!” he snarled.

“The forest will fall. . . .” Jaypaw’s voice had an echoing qual-ity, as if another voice had joined it. “The forest will fall. . . .”

Now there was a third, all the voices twining together.

Lionblaze thought he saw a shimmer on the surface of the marsh. He blinked; then every hair on his pelt stood on end.

Two cats balanced on the surface of the mud: one a big tabby with a torn ear, the other a small gray-and-white tom. Frost sparkled at their paws and starlight was ref lected in their eyes.

“Raggedstar! Runningnose!” Littlecloud exclaimed from among the uprooted trees.

Blackfoot stopped his frantic clawing and stared, his mouth dropping open.

“Sol’s time in ShadowClan must come to an end,” Raggedstar meowed, his gaze locked with Blackfoot’s. “He is like the darkness that covered the sun.”

“He seems to have taken over your Clan,” Runningnose put in, “but he will pass and be forgotten in the brightness that follows. Brightness that will shine on ShadowClan for countless moons.”

“I . . . I hear you,” Blackfoot stammered. “I’ll do as you say.”

Littlecloud dipped his head as respectfully as he could with twigs clutching at his pelt. “ShadowClan will return to our warrior ancestors,” he promised, and added, “What have you done with our apprentice?”

“He is safe,” Raggedstar replied.

The gaze of the StarClan warriors swept around to rest on Hollyleaf, Jaypaw, and finally Lionblaze, who forced himself not to flinch. Would these starry cats be angry at what he and his littermates had done?

The StarClan cats did not speak, just bent their heads in a dignified nod. Their glimmering forms began to fade until they were no more than wisps of starlight above the marsh.

Then they were gone. Lionblaze let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Blackfoot broke through the branches that held him without much trouble; Littlecloud followed him through the gap he had made, and both cats scrambled onto dry ground at the edge of the marsh. Their pelts were clumped with mud and bits of twigs and debris, and blood was trickling from one of Blackfoot’s ears.

“StarClan hasn’t abandoned us!” Littlecloud’s voice was shaken, but ecstatic.

Blackfoot shook his head. “They spoke to us,” he murmured.

“You were right, Littlecloud. We can’t ignore the spirits of our warrior ancestors. Not when they’re still watching over us.”

“What will you do now?” Littlecloud asked.

“Get rid of Sol, to begin with.” Blackfoot flexed his claws until the tips disappeared into the wet ground. “I can’t believe I let myself listen to that mange-ridden trickster. He told me StarClan didn’t care what happened to us! But they brought us here, made the trees fall so that we had to hear them. I’ll make sure that no ShadowClan cat is led astray by Sol again.

You don’t think I’ve left it too long?” he added anxiously.

“I know you haven’t,” Littlecloud reassured him, touching his leader’s shoulder with the tip of his tail. “The warrior code lives within every one of the cats born in ShadowClan. One cat alone cannot quench that flame.”

“Then let’s go,” Blackfoot meowed, turning toward the ShadowClan camp.

Littlecloud hesitated. “Tigerpaw, are you there?”

Lionblaze saw the apprentice clamber out of his hiding place under the trunk and splash his way through the mud to his Clanmates.

“Are you okay?” Littlecloud asked. “Did you see what happened?”

“Yes.” Tigerpaw’s amber eyes were shining. “I never thought I’d get to see real StarClan warriors!”

Nor did I, Lionblaze thought.

Tigerpaw dipped his head to Blackfoot. “Can we come back now?”

Blackfoot nodded. “Of course. ShadowClan needs you.”

Tigerpaw straightened proudly. “Then I’ll go and find Flamepaw and Dawnpaw.”

“Get back to camp as soon as you can,” Blackfoot ordered.

Waving his tail to Littlecloud, he added, “Let’s go. I can’t wait to tell our Clan they can look to their warrior ancestors again.”

“I know they’ll all be glad to hear it, Blackfoot,” Littlecloud meowed.

The white cat drew himself to his full height, his muscles rippling beneath his ruffled pelt. “Black star,” he corrected.

“My name is Blackstar.”

Raising his tail, the ShadowClan leader stalked off into the forest, with his medicine cat padding behind him.

From the moment when the StarClan warriors started to speak, Toadfoot had lain still as a stone under Lionblaze’s paws. When Lionblaze and Flamepaw let him get up, he sat staring at the marsh as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. “Were those really cats from StarClan?” he whispered.

“Yes, they were,” Flamepaw replied solemnly. “Our warrior ancestors are still watching over us. They want the warrior code to be preserved.”

Toadfoot blinked, still stunned.

“What are you going to do now?” Lionblaze asked him. If Blackstar knew what they had done, would he still want his Clan to look to their warrior ancestors?

Toadfoot’s glance f licked from Lionblaze to Flamepaw and back again, a low growl beginning to build in his throat.

“You faked that sign!”

“Only to start with.” Flamepaw faced his Clanmate. “We made the trees fall and brought Blackstar here. But we didn’t make the StarClan cats appear. They came of their own accord, and that made it a real sign after all.”

Toadfoot shook bits of bracken off his dark brown pelt, his eyes still indecisive. “You’re lucky they did come,” he muttered.

“Otherwise ShadowClan would have torn ThunderClan apart for interfering and lying.”

“You could try,” Lionblaze meowed, his fur bristling.

“But StarClan really did come,” Flamepaw persisted. “They proved that they are still watching over us, that we should still listen to them and live by the warrior code. They have the Clan’s best interests at heart; we have to believe what they say for our own sake.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Lionblaze demanded.

Toadfoot paused, then nodded. “I suppose I should thank you,” he meowed grudgingly.

“No,” Lionblaze replied, “it’s StarClan you should thank.”

Hollyleaf padded up, mud dripping from her pelt, and gave Toadfoot a disapproving sniff. “What are we going to do about him?” she asked Lionblaze.

It was Toadfoot who answered. “I promise I won’t tell any cat what I saw.”

Hollyleaf ’s ears flicked up. “Can we trust him?”

“It’s trust him or kill him.” Jaypaw joined them and sat down with a gusty sigh. “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t go through all this to start killing ShadowClan cats.”

“Then we have to trust you.” Lionblaze turned to Toadfoot. “Swear by StarClan that you’ll keep the secret.”

“Of course I will, mouse-brain.” Toadfoot lashed his tail.

“I swear it. Unless keeping your secret will harm my Clan,” he added instantly.

“Which it won’t.” Lionblaze gave Toadfoot a brusque nod.

“You can go.”

Toadfoot turned and stalked away, with a last fearful glance at the marsh where the two StarClan warriors had appeared.

“Come on.” Tigerpaw waved his tail at his two littermates.

“We’ve got to get back, too.”

The apprentices dipped their heads to the ThunderClan cats.

“We’ll never be able to thank you enough,” Flamepaw mewed.

“We did this for ThunderClan, too. And we couldn’t have done it without you,” Lionblaze replied.

“What are we going to do about our mother?” Dawnpaw asked her brother and sister.

Tigerpaw and Flamepaw looked blankly at each other.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Lionblaze assured them.

“We’ll tell Tawnypelt what happened. You need to get back to your camp right away, and we need to get off your territory.”