Firestar’s Quest

By now the other warriors were emerging from the cave.

Firestar picked up Rainfur’s scent and Leafdapple’s, and a strong reek of fear from Shortwhisker.

“Let’s go,” he meowed. “Stay in the open if you can. Don’t let them trap you in any caves—your advantage lies in being able to run and jump away from them.”

He raced up the trail toward the oncoming mass of rats.

Sharpclaw bounded beside him, and the others were hard on his paws. Firestar just had time to think, This is what they were waiting for—a night with no moon! Then the rats were on him.

Tiny claws gripped his pelt and sank into his shoulders as the sleek brown bodies surged around him. Their hot stink filled his throat, choking his breath. He felt teeth stab into the side of his neck and swatted at the rat with one forepaw.

It vanished with a thin shriek. Two more instantly took its place, and Firestar struggled to stay on his paws. If he fell, more rats would be on him and he would have no chance.

Firestar heard a drawn-out caterwaul from the bottom of the gorge, but he couldn’t tell which cat it was. Please, not the nursery! He could make out the glittering eyes of his enemies now, and their sharp white teeth. Peering among them, he looked for the rat leader, but he couldn’t spot him. Either he was hidden by the darkness, or he had stayed behind.

Firestar caught a glimpse of Sharpclaw tossing rats off the boulders to fall into the gorge with shrill wails of fear. Nearby Leafdapple was rolling on the ground with two rats clinging to her pelt. Firestar tried to push his way through the bodies to help her, but just then she bit down hard on the throat of one, and it went limp. The other rat let out a screech of fear and leaped away.

Firestar staggered as another rat jumped onto his back; he scraped himself along a boulder in an effort to throw it off, but it still clung there. Its teeth sank into his shoulder and he felt blood begin to flow. He twisted, vainly trying to grab it with teeth or claws. One hind paw slipped; there was nothing underneath it, and Firestar tottered on the edge of the trail, unbalanced by the weight of the rat on his shoulders.

Then the rat let out a scream, abruptly cut off. Its teeth lost their grip and its weight vanished. Cat claws fastened in Firestar’s shoulder fur and hauled him away from the terrifying drop.

“You okay?” Rainfur’s voice meowed in his ear.

“Fine, thanks,” Firestar panted.

And still the rats came, more and more of them, pouring over the cliff and down the rocks. No matter how many the SkyClan warriors killed, there were still more. Firestar realized that they were being pushed back, past the opening of the warriors’ cave, down toward the nursery.

Then another outbreak of screeching and caterwauling broke out far below. Firestar stiffened with his teeth in a rat’s throat, and stood peering down for a couple of heartbeats.

He couldn’t see anything, but terror flowed through his limbs. There must be rats down by the river! A second group must have come along the gorge to attack the SkyClan camp from below.

Tossing his dead enemy aside, Firestar struggled through the writhing swarm of rats. Fear for the apprentices, for Echosong, for the kits, almost overwhelmed him. His claws slashed out and the rats in his path whimpered and fled.

Suddenly the fighting stopped. The rats turned as one, scrambling up the rocks toward the cliff top. Sharpclaw sprang after them with a screech of triumph.

“No!” Firestar yowled. “Wait!”

Sharpclaw turned and looked down at him in furious disbelief. “They’re running away! We should go after them.”

“No,” Firestar repeated. “It could be a trap.”

“But we could finish them off once and for all!”

Firestar scrambled up to block Sharpclaw, while the skit-tering of rats’ paws on the rocks faded away. “They could be waiting on the cliff top to ambush us,” he insisted. “Think, Sharpclaw! Why should they go on fighting to the death? All they need to do is frighten us off. Maybe they think they’ve already done that.”

“Never!” Sharpclaw let out a snarl, but he stayed where he was, glaring into the darkness where the last of the rats had vanished. The noise of fighting in the gorge had died away, too.

Firestar glanced around. As well as Sharpclaw, he could make out the pale blur of Leafdapple’s pelt, and the darker bulk of Rainfur. There was no sign of Shortwhisker, and Firestar’s belly clenched at the thought of the tabby tom’s body broken in the gorge, or lying somewhere among the rocks, bleeding out his life.

“Let’s go down,” he meowed. “We’ll check the nursery first, then Echosong’s cave.”

The other cats bunched together behind him as he limped down the trail. When he rounded a curve in the rock a furious hiss came out of the darkness. Clovertail was crouched in the narrow entrance between the boulder and the cliff face.