The Fourth Apprentice

Sunhigh came and went as the cats padded onward up the stream. Lionblaze’s belly began to rumble; it seemed a long time since their fresh-kill in the early morning. Whitetail and Sedgewhisker seemed excited by something; their ears were pricked and their whiskers quivered, and they kept whispering to each other.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

Sedgewhisker turned to him, her eyes glowing. “We can scent rabbits!”

“What?” Toadfoot halted with a scornful flick of his tail. “Have you got bees in your brain? Rabbits wouldn’t live this close to Twolegs.”

“Yeah, the Twolegs would probably hunt them,” Tigerheart added.

“There are rabbits,” Whitetail insisted, giving the ShadowClan cats a withering glare. “And not far away, either.” She began stalking up the streambed, nostrils twitching; Sedgewhisker padded at her shoulder.

Lionblaze turned to Dovepaw. “Are they right?”

To his disappointment, his apprentice just gave a shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve still got my senses blocked,” she muttered. She looked up at him with a fierce glare. “I can’t help it, okay? There’s just too much noise to cope with!”

“Okay,” Lionblaze soothed before the other cats wondered what they were talking about.

Suddenly Whitetail streaked away with Sedgewhisker hard on her paws. The WindClan warriors shot up the side of the bank and vanished through the thick grass that bordered the stream.

“Fox dung!” Toadfoot hissed, heading after them.

Lionblaze and the other cats followed, then stopped dead as they reached the top of the bank and peered through the clumps of grass.

“There is a rabbit!” Petalfur breathed. “Two rabbits!”

Water flooded Lionblaze’s jaws as he eyed the creatures: They were young and plump, with thick black-and-white pelts. They sat nibbling on the patch of grass that stretched as far as the Twoleg nest, quite unaware that hunters were nearby. For some reason they were surrounded by a fence of shiny Twoleg stuff, but it was low enough for a cat to scramble over easily.

Whitetail and Sedgewhisker were already crouched on the grass, ready to spring; Lionblaze flattened himself to the ground and crept up to join them, aware of Toadfoot just behind him and the rest of the patrol fanning out to intercept any rabbit that might make a dash for safety. He saw Whitetail bunch her muscles to leap over the fence. A heartbeat later she froze as a loud yowl came from a tree a few tail-lengths away.

“Hey! You! Hold it right there!”

Lionblaze stared in astonishment as three kittypets leaped down from the tree and raced across the grass to stand between the WindClan cats and the rabbits. In the lead was an orange tom with glaring yellow eyes, followed by a small white she-cat and a fat black-and-brown tabby tom.

The orange tom planted himself right in front of Whitetail; his two companions stood just behind him. They both looked terrified, their fur fluffed out and their ears flattened.

“You can’t hunt these rabbits,” the orange tom declared, baring his teeth in the beginnings of a snarl.

“Oh, yeah?” Sedgewhisker rose from her hunter’s crouch to stand nose to nose with the kittypet. “We’ll fight you for them, if that’s what you want. You should lay more scent markers if you want cats to stay out of your territory!”

“Territory?” The white she-cat sounded confused. “What are you meowing about?”

“Territory!” Toadfoot snarled, padding up to stand beside Sedgewhisker. “Don’t pretend you’re so dumb that you don’t know what territory is.”

“This is my housefolk’s nest,” the black-and-brown tom mewed.

“But the rabbits aren’t in the nest, are they?” Whitetail sounded as if she was talking to particularly stupid kits. “Unless this territory is scent-marked, they’re free for any cat to hunt.”

“No, they’re not,” the orange tom insisted, his neck fur bristling up.

Tigerheart narrowed his eyes. “Look, kittypet—”

“This is ridiculous,” Sedgewhisker interrupted impatiently. “There are two perfectly good rabbits waiting to be caught, and all we can do is argue. Are you hunting them?” she asked the kittypets. “Because—”

All three kittypets let out gasps of horror, their eyes stretched wide.

“No!” the tabby tom exclaimed. “Those rabbits belong to my housefolk.”

“We would be in big trouble if we hunted them,” the orange tom added.

“That’s right,” the white she-cat meowed. “Every cat around here knows about the tom who hunted his housefolk’s rabbit.” Her voice grew hushed. “They took him to the Cutter, and he was never the same afterward.”

Lionblaze and the other Clan cats exchanged puzzled glances. “Now I’ve heard everything,” Rippletail remarked. “Kittypets guarding Twoleg rabbits!”

“So what?” Toadfoot growled. “I’m going to get the rabbits anyway. They look fat and slow enough for any cat to catch, not just WindClan.”

He hurled himself at the shiny fence and started to claw his way up it. Immediately the orange tom grabbed Toadfoot’s tail in his teeth and yanked him down again.