The Darkest Hour

Suddenly a new scent drifted on the breeze. Firestar paused, his whiskers twitching. His eyes widened as he recognized the reek of carrion, crowfood that had rotted for days until its foul stench poisoned the air.

“Ugh! What’s that?” growled Ravenpaw, forgetting the need for silence.

Firestar swallowed the bile that rose into his throat. “I don’t know. I’d say it was a foxhole, but there’s no scent of fox.”

“It stinks, whatever it is,” Graystripe muttered. “Come on, Firestar, we need to keep going before some cat catches us.”

“No,” Firestar meowed. “I know you’re worried about your kits, Graystripe, but this is too strange. We have to investigate.”

A few tail-lengths ahead, a tiny stream flowed sluggishly into the main river. Firestar turned to follow it through more reeds. The stench grew stronger, and beneath the smell of crowfood he began to pick up the scent of many cats, a mixture of ShadowClan and RiverClan like the patrol. He halted and signaled for his friends to do the same as he began to make out noises from somewhere ahead: movement in the reeds and the voices of cats mingling together.

“What is this?” Graystripe whispered. “We’re nowhere near the camp.”

Firestar flicked the tip of his tail for silence. At least the stench would mask their ThunderClan scent and make it easier for them to stay hidden.

More cautiously than ever Firestar crept on again until the reeds began to thin out and he came to the edge of a clearing. Flattening himself against the damp ground he crawled as far forward as he dared and looked out.

At once he had to clamp his teeth hard to keep back a yowl of shock and anger. The stream ran along one side of the clearing, its near-stagnant waters clogged by the remains of fresh-kill carelessly flung there and left to rot. Cats crouched on the bank, tearing at prey. But that was not what had roused Firestar’s fury.

Opposite his hiding place, on the far side of the clearing was a vast hill of bones. They gleamed like stripped branches in the last of the watery daylight, some tiny shrew bones hardly bigger than teeth, others as big as the leg bone of a fox or a badger.

Icy trembling seized Firestar’s body. For a heartbeat he thought he was back in his dream at Fourtrees. He remembered the blood that had come oozing out of that hill of bones, and longed to flee in terror. But this was far worse than the dream because Firestar knew that it was happening now, in the real world. And crouched on top of the pile, his fur black against the sun-bleached remains, was Tigerstar, leader of the new united Clan.

Firestar forced himself to stay hidden. He had to find out what Tigerstar was doing. Graystripe and Ravenpaw crept forward to crouch beside him. Ravenpaw’s fur bristled, and Graystripe looked as if he were going to be sick.

After the first shock ebbed, Firestar examined the scene more closely. The hill was made up of only prey bones, not mixed with cat bones like the one in his dream. On one side of it stood the ShadowClan deputy, Blackfoot. On the other side was Leopardstar. Her gaze flicked nervously back and forth across the clearing. Firestar wondered if she regretted what had happened to her Clan, and he guessed that her ambition to make her Clan strong had blinded her to Tigerstar’s real nature. But whatever the former RiverClan leader felt, it was too late for her to go back now.

“I can’t see my kits,” Graystripe whispered, a breath of sound close to Firestar’s ear.

Mistyfoot and Stonefur weren’t there either, Firestar realized. In fact, most of the cats in the clearing came from ShadowClan, though he spotted the RiverClan warriors Mudfur and Heavystep. There was no sign of either medicine cat, and Firestar wondered if that was significant.

He was still watching, too stunned to know what to do next, when Tigerstar rose to his paws. A few small bones rattled down the side of the hill. The dark tabby’s eyes blazed in the fading light as he let out a triumphant yowl.

“Cats of TigerClan, gather here around the Bonehill for a Clan meeting!”

Immediately the cats in the clearing approached the hill, crouching low in respect. Others appeared from the reeds.

“He must have built that hill to look like the Highrock,” Ravenpaw murmured. “So he can look down on his Clan.”

The dark tabby waited until his warriors were all in place and then announced, “It is time for the trial to begin. Fetch the prisoners!”

Firestar exchanged a bewildered look with Graystripe. Where had Tigerstar found prisoners? Had he already mounted an attack on WindClan?

At Tigerstar’s order, a ShadowClan warrior—Jaggedtooth, who had been one of Brokentail’s rogues—vanished into the reeds. He returned a few moments later dragging another cat with him. At first Firestar did not recognize the skinny gray warrior, his fur unkempt and one ear shredded and bleeding. Then, as Jaggedtooth pushed him into the circle of cats beneath the Bonehill, Firestar realized it was Stonefur.