Fire And Ice

Fireheart glanced at his friend, amused for a moment. The scent trail was quite clear now—definitely WindClan, but mixed and pungent, as if made by many frightened cats. Fireheart looked down. Drops of dried blood dotted the ground. “We’re heading the right way,” he meowed darkly. Two moons of rain and wind had failed to wash away the signs of suffering. Fireheart could clearly picture the defeated and injured Clan fleeing from their home. With a surge of anger he bounded after his friend.

The trail led them to the far edge of the uplands, where they stopped to catch their breath. In front of them the ground sloped away to the Twoleg farmland. Far in the distance, where the sun was beginning to set, loomed the towering shapes of Highstones.

“I wonder if Nightpelt is there yet,” Fireheart murmured. In a tunnel below Highstones lay the sacred Moonstone, where the leaders of each Clan shared dreams with StarClan.

“Well, we don’t want to find him down there!” Graystripe flicked his tail at the wide expanse of Twoleg land. “It’ll be hard enough dodging Twolegs, rats, and dogs, without meeting the new ShadowClan leader as well!”

Fireheart nodded. He thought back to their last journey across this land, with Bluestar and Tigerclaw. They had almost been killed by an attack of rats, and only the arrival of Barley, the loner, had saved them. Even so, Bluestar had lost one of her lives; the memory of it stung Fireheart like a wood ant.

“Do you think we’ll find any trace of Ravenpaw down there?” Graystripe meowed, turning his broad face toward Fireheart.

“I hope so,” Fireheart replied solemnly. The last he had seen of Ravenpaw had been the white tip of his tail disappearing into the storm on the uplands. Had the ThunderClan apprentice made it safely to Barley’s territory?

The two warriors started down the slope, carefully sniffing each clump of grass to make sure they stayed on the WindClan trail.

“It doesn’t look as if they were heading for Highstones,” Graystripe remarked. The trail took them sideways into a wide grassy field. They skirted the edge, staying near the hedgerow as WindClan had done. The scent led them out of the field and onto a Twoleg path through a small copse of trees.

“Look!” Graystripe meowed. Sun-bleached piles of prey bones lay scattered in the undergrowth. Mossy bedding had been gathered beneath the thickest patches of brambles.

“WindClan must have tried to settle here,” Fireheart meowed in surprise.

“I wonder what made them leave?” asked Graystripe, sniffing the air. “The scent is old.”

Fireheart shrugged and the two cats followed the trail onward to a thick hedge. With a bit of a struggle, they wriggled through onto a grass verge. Beyond a narrow ditch lay a wide earth track.

Graystripe leaped nimbly over the ditch and onto the hard red track. Fireheart looked around, stiffening as he recognized a hard-edged silhouette in the distance. “Graystripe! Stop!” he hissed.

“What’s up?”

Fireheart pointed with his nose. “Look at that Twolegplace over there! We must be near Barley’s territory.”

Graystripe’s ears twitched nervously. “That’s where those dogs live! But WindClan definitely came this way. We’ll have to hurry. We need to get past the Twoleg nest before sunset.”

Fireheart remembered Barley telling them that the Twolegs let the dogs loose at night, and the sun was already sinking toward the craggy tops of Highstones. He nodded. “Perhaps the dogs chased WindClan out of the woods.” With an anxious twinge, he thought of Ravenpaw. “Do you think he found Barley?” he asked.

“Who? Ravenpaw? Why not? We made it this far!” meowed Graystripe. “Don’t underestimate him. Remember the time Tigerclaw sent him to Snakerocks? He came back with an adder!”

Fireheart purred at the memory as Graystripe leaped across the track and through the hedge on the far side. Fireheart chased after him, quickening his pace to match his friend step for step.

A dog barked furiously from the Twoleg nest, but its vicious snarling soon faded into the distance. The temperature plunged as the sun set, and frost began to form on the grass.

“Should we keep going?” asked Graystripe. “What if the trail takes us to Highstones after all? Nightpelt will definitely be there by now.”

Fireheart lifted his nose and sniffed the browning fronds of some ferns. The smell of WindClan, sour with fear, pricked at him. “We’d better keep going,” he meowed. “We’ll stop when we have to.”

The cold breeze carried another odor to Fireheart’s nose—there was a Thunderpath nearby. Graystripe screwed up his face. He’d smelled it too. The warriors exchanged a look of dismay, but pushed on. The stench grew stronger and stronger until they could hear the roar of Thunderpath monsters in the distance. By the time they reached the hedge that ran alongside the wide gray path, it was hard to make out the WindClan trail at all.