Every hair on Dovepaw’s pelt prickled with annoyance. Springing over the low bracken wall of the den, she stalked over to her mentor. “I can do my own shift!” she growled. “You don’t have to treat me like a kit.”
“You’ve only just been made an apprentice,” Lionblaze reminded her.
Dovepaw bit back a yowl of frustration. “The prophecy doesn’t care about that, does it?” she pointed out. “I had my power before I left the nursery. It’s not like StarClan waited for me to grow up first.”
Lionblaze opened his jaws to reply, but before he could speak a rustling noise came from the den and Sedgewhisker sat up, stretching. Her eyes were filled with shock as she looked around; then she seemed to remember where she was and stood up, shaking scraps of moss from her pelt.
“Hi, Sedgewhisker,” Dovepaw called. “How’s your shoulder?”
The WindClan she-cat flexed her leg experimentally, then looked up, purring with relief. “It’s much better, thanks. I can hardly feel anything.”
As she spoke, the other cats began stirring, looking tense when they realized how close they were to cats of other Clans.
“We should get on with hunting,” Toadfoot announced, jumping out of his nest. “Before it gets too hot and all the prey is hiding down holes.”
“Don’t go too far,” Lionblaze warned the cats as they scattered. “Remember, those dogs might still be around.”
Dovepaw cast out her senses, but she couldn’t pick up a trace of the dogs.
Slipping between the trees, she spotted the squirrel nibbling a seed at the foot of a beech tree. Dovepaw pressed herself to the ground, checked that the wind was blowing her scent away from her prey, and dropped into the hunter’s crouch. Step by silent step, she pulled herself closer.
One swift blow of her paw brought the squirrel down, and she trotted proudly back to the others, who were gathering again beside the den. Lionblaze had killed a vole, while Tigerheart had a couple of shrews and Toadfoot had a mouse. Whitetail and Sedgewhisker had caught a rabbit together.
“You should teach us that technique of hunting as a pair,” Lionblaze was suggesting as Dovepaw padded up with her fresh-kill. “It could be useful.”
Whitetail acknowledged his words with a flick of her ears; Dovepaw guessed she didn’t feel comfortable teaching anything to cats from another Clan.
As the cats settled down to eat, Rippletail and Petalfur drew back. “We didn’t catch anything, so we can’t eat,” Petalfur meowed, with a longing look at the fresh-kill.
“Nonsense,” Whitetail replied briskly. “How are you going to travel if your bellies are empty?”
“That’s right,” Lionblaze added. “On this journey, we all share. Come on, there’s plenty.”
The two RiverClan cats crept back again and Dovepaw dropped her squirrel in front of them. “Thanks,” Rippletail muttered.
Dovepaw sensed their guilt and embarrassment as they started to eat, and she felt sorry for any cats who were so dependent on one kind of prey. No wonder the RiverClan cats were starving now that they couldn’t find fish.
When every cat had finished eating, they set out again, with Toadfoot in the lead. They padded silently along the bed of the stream, almost as uncomfortable with one another as they had been at the start of the journey; Dovepaw could feel the tension rising, as if each one had realized all over again that they didn’t know where they were going, or how they were going to get there.
Panic bubbled up inside her.
Pausing, she struggled to block out all the sounds of the forest around her, then closed her eyes and cast her senses ahead. At once, sounds began to travel down the streambed to the stones underneath her paws: scratching, gnawing, the slap of trapped water, and the paw steps of large brown animals slipping over a pile of tree trunks. She sensed their bulky bodies as they dragged more branches out into the stream.
“Dovepaw?” She jumped at the sound of Petalfur’s voice. “Are you okay?”
Dovepaw’s eyes blinked open to see the RiverClan cat at the rear of the group looking back over her shoulder.
“Uh…sure,” Dovepaw mewed, running to catch up. “I’m fine.”
Reassured that the brown animals really were up ahead, she fell in beside Petalfur as they padded on. The foliage overhead was growing thicker, blocking out the fierce rays of the sun, so that it felt as if the cats were traveling through a cool, dimly lit tunnel. Dovepaw even spotted a pool of water underneath the overhanging bank.