Sign Of The Moon

Dovewing stretched up as far as she could and sank her teeth into Splash’s tail. Thankfully the wall of the cleft wasn’t as sheer as she had first thought; there were paw holds that she could use to balance herself and take at least part of the weight off Splash’s tail.

Crag and Stormfur were holding on to the she-cat, bracing her, as Dovewing scrambled over the edge of the cleft and collapsed on one side. “Thank you!” she gasped. “I’m really sorry!”

Splash gave her tail a couple of experimental flicks. “You’re welcome,” she replied. “No harm done.”

“Next time I’ll watch where I’m putting my paws,” Dovewing promised. Shivering, she hauled herself up. Her pelt was covered with snow and grit; she felt she would never be clean or warm again.

“Do you want to go back to the cave?” Stormfur asked. “Swoop will go with you.”

Dovewing shook her head. She didn’t want to be a nuisance and leave the patrol with only one cave-guard, especially with eagles about. “No, I can keep going,” she insisted.

Foxleap padded up and gave her ear a quick lick. “Just tell me if you need any help,” he whispered.

Dovewing’s muscles ached and her pads were sore from scrambling out of the cleft, but she kept pace with the others as Crag led the patrol down the gully and across a ridge before halting in front of a tall spike of stone where a narrow stream bubbled up from between two rocks and wound away into the distance. The surface was frozen, but Dovewing could hear water trickling underneath.

“This is a border marker,” Crag told the Clan cats, angling his ears at the rocky spike. “Gray, would you renew the scent markers?”

While they waited, Dovewing gazed across the rolling hills, the wind buffeting her fur. “Where’s the next marker?” she asked Crag.

The cave-guard pointed with his tail. “You see that dead tree, next to the stream? That’s it.”

On the far side of the valley, almost as far as the distance between ThunderClan’s camp and the ShadowClan border, was a tiny stunted tree clinging to the edge of a narrow gully. Dovewing stared at Crag; she hadn’t realized that the Tribe’s territory was so big. “But it’s so far away! How do you check the borders? It must take the whole day to do one patrol.”

“We patrol only certain sections,” Swoop explained, padding up to stand beside Crag. “Other groups will protect the rest of the border.”

Dovewing nodded, privately thinking that it wouldn’t take a lot of effort for enemies to figure out there were gaps between each patrol. She cast out her senses and almost at once picked up the sound of cats far away, beyond the border.

They must be the intruders the Tribe is always talking about. But they don’t sound threatening now. They’re hunting, but they’re not trespassing on Tribe territory.

She tensed as she heard the raucous screech of an eagle and instinctively looked up, but the bird was no more than a speck in the sky, well away from where her patrol was standing. Farther away still, she could hear the answering call of eagle chicks and caught a glimpse of them, bald and scrawny, in a mountaintop nest.

Then Dovewing heard a scratching sound much closer by. She identified a vole, pushing its way through the moss at the edge of the frozen stream, hidden by the ice that overhung the bank. She could smell it, too, just a faint trace beneath the clean, sharp scent of snow.

“Vole!” she yowled, leaping for the stream.

To her amazement, Stormfur knocked her aside; Dovewing sprawled on the ice at the water’s edge.

“What—?” she began, scrambling up.

“If you fall through the snow into the stream, you’ll get dangerously cold,” Stormfur explained. “Sorry if I hurt you.”

Dovewing shook her head. “I’m fine.” Is he saying that I could die, just from getting wet? “But there’s prey under there,” she added, guessing that none of the others had heard the vole. Listening again, she realized that the vole had stopped moving. Mouse dung! It heard us. That will make it far more difficult to catch.

Gray and Splash padded up, their ears pricked and their jaws parted to pick up the least trace of prey. “Well done for spotting it,” Splash murmured to Dovewing. “Can you hear it now?”

Dovewing stretched all her senses, and finally heard a faint, cautious scuffling that told her the vole was on the move again. Without speaking, she nodded toward the spot on the bank where she thought the vole was hiding.

“Just under the bank,” Gray whispered, and Splash nodded.

Taking up positions on either side of the vole, the two Tribe prey-hunters dug down into the snow with strong, thin legs. Crag and Swoop stood guard over each of their Tribemates.

“The cave-guards stay with the prey-hunters,” Stormfur explained to Dovewing and Foxleap. “See how they’re watching the sky? They’ll warn Gray and Splash if any eagles appear.”