Sunrise

Brambleclaw cocked his ears. “Well?”

“He didn’t raise a single claw to help us,” the old tom growled. “He wasn’t even there to watch! He just strolled in here while we were licking our wounds.”

“What happened then?” Brackenfur asked.

Jingo twitched her ears. “If he’d admitted he was wrong, it might have been different. But he insisted that we were the ones who decided to fight, and it wasn’t his fault that we lost. Then he sat down and started washing himself, and asked Jet to bring him some food.”

“If I hadn’t held Jet back, he might have ripped Sol to pieces,” Hussar added.

Birchfall’s whiskers twitched. “I wish he had!”

Jingo looked surprised, but she didn’t ask the young warrior what he meant. “So we asked Sol to leave,” she meowed. “We would have driven him out if we had to, but he just told us we were making a mistake and went without a fight.” She sighed. “Maybe he was right. I don’t know anymore.”

“No, she was right,” Birchfall muttered into Lionblaze’s ear. “They’re better off without Sol, and so are we!”

Jingo rose to her paws, yawned and stretched, then sat down again. “That’s all we can tell you. Now tell us what you know.”

Brambleclaw and Brackenfur exchanged a glance; it was Brackenfur who spoke first. “Sol came to the forest where we live,” he began. “It must have been after he left you. He went to stay with ShadowClan—a group of cats who live near us—and he persuaded them to stop believing in the warrior code and the spirits of their warrior ancestors.”

The Twolegplace cats glanced blankly at one another. Clearly they had never heard of StarClan or the warrior code.

“He can be very powerful when he’s trying to persuade you,” Jingo murmured.

Lionblaze flashed a glance at Hollyleaf. They knew better than most cats how persuasive Sol could be. Maybe Sol was right, Lionblaze couldn’t help thinking, in spite of his horror at what the dogs had done. Maybe these cats shouldn’t blame him because they lost the battle. He flexed his claws, imagining what he would do if he came face to face with one of the dogs. Maybe they should have trained harder.

“So are you looking for Sol because of what he did to…to ShadowClan?” Jingo asked.

“No, it’s because another warrior—” Birchfall began eagerly. Lionblaze’s belly churned at the thought of discussing Ashfur’s murder.

Brambleclaw raised his tail to silence the younger warrior. “We just need to talk to Sol about something that happened recently,” he stated calmly. “Have you seen him?”

“No, and we don’t want to,” Pod growled.

Hussar muttered an agreement, but Lionblaze noticed that Speckle was looking wistful, as if she had better memories of Sol.

“I haven’t seen Sol.” Chirp, who had remained quietly by the door, spoke suddenly, startling Lionblaze. “But I heard he’s back.”

Hussar scraped his claws hard against the floor. “He wouldn’t dare!”

“Not here,” Chirp explained, “but on the other side of Twolegplace. Where a cat called Purdy used to live.”

“We know Purdy!” Lionblaze exclaimed, remembering the old loner who had guided them on part of their journey to the mountains.

“Thanks, that’s a great help,” Brambleclaw meowed. “We’ll go and look for him there.”

“It’s too late to go now.” Jingo rose to her paws and leaped lightly off the soft boulder to land beside Hussar. “You can stay here for the night.”

Brambleclaw dipped his head. “Thank you.”

“You can eat with us,” Jingo continued. “Come on, Hussar, help me carry the prey.”

The two cats left and returned a moment later loaded with fresh-kill, which they shared among all the cats. Speckle jumped down from her boulder to join them, and her kits scrambled after her; she picked out a mouse for them and they squabbled happily over it.

“This isn’t what Sol would have taught them,” Lionblaze murmured to Hollyleaf as he crouched to eat a blackbird. “Remember how he told ShadowClan that every cat should feed themselves? He said it was a sign of weakness for any cat to depend on another.”

Hollyleaf nodded. “These cats obviously have a fresh-kill pile somewhere, and they hunt for cats who can’t hunt for themselves. They’re almost like a Clan.”

“It looks like they’re better off without Sol.” But as Lionblaze spoke, he knew that some of these cats wouldn’t agree with him. He had felt the pull of Sol’s charm, his quiet authority and sense that he knew exactly the right thing to do. Jingo and the others must have felt it too, and missed the loner when he was gone. Lionblaze thoughtfully ate his blackbird. It was plump and juicy, but it had a taint of the Thunderpath about it, and he would have found it hard to choke down if he hadn’t been so ravenous.

When they had finished eating, Speckle’s kits started to bat a scrap of leaf around, squealing and tumbling over one another in their excitement. Frisk, the biggest and boldest of the four, batted the leaf toward Lionblaze.