The Forgotten Warrior

Brightheart dipped her head, clearly pleased at being invited to contribute. “I’m used to darkness on one side,” she began, “so the darkness down here doesn’t bother me all that much. You need to make sure you’re using your whiskers and your tail-tip. They’ll help you judge how far away you are from the tunnel walls.”

Hollyleaf nodded. “Let’s try a practice round to show us how that works. Ivypool, come and fight with her.”

Ivypool leaped forward and tried to trap Brightheart against the cave wall. But Brightheart seemed to know exactly where she was without needing to look behind her. She slid to one side and raked her paw down Ivypool’s flank.

“Great!” Ivypool wheezed, struggling to get her breath back. “If your claws were out, I’d be crow-food.”

Brightheart repeated the sequence, but this time slowed down her moves so that every cat could see how she used her tail and whiskers. “Don’t forget you can’t always see your enemy down here,” she added. “You’ll need to use hearing and scent much more than you do when you’re fighting out in the open.”

“Good point,” Hollyleaf meowed. “We’ll do an exercise now to practice that. I’m going to take you into the tunnels one by one, and leave you there. You have to find your way back to us by listening and smelling.”

“What if we can’t?” Thornclaw asked with a twitch of his tail-tip.

“Then I’ll come and get you, mouse-brain,” Hollyleaf retorted. “Come on, you can be first. Meanwhile, the rest of you can practice Brightheart’s moves.”

She disappeared into a nearby tunnel, with Thornclaw trailing reluctantly after her. Dovewing was surprised when the tabby warrior returned soon after Hollyleaf, giving himself a couple of complacent licks as he emerged into the cave again.

“Good,” Hollyleaf mewed. “Now you, Dovewing.”

Hollyleaf led the way down a series of tunnels that twisted and branched so that Dovewing knew she would never have found the way out again without something to guide her.

“All right, this’ll do,” Hollyleaf told her as they reached a dead end. “Wait for as long as it takes to eat a mouse, and then follow me back.”

Dovewing waited much longer than that. Thanks to her special senses she could pick up the sounds of the cats in the cavern and knew exactly where she had to go. She didn’t want to give her powers away, so she tried to judge how long she should have taken before she rejoined them. From the moderate praise Hollyleaf gave her, Dovewing guessed her calculations had been right.

Toadstep was the last cat to go. Growing tired, the rest of the cats had stopped practicing and waited in the cave as the moments dragged out and he didn’t reappear.

“Hollyleaf, do you think—” Brightheart began.

A panic-stricken yowl interrupted her, seeming to come from right inside the walls of the cave. “I’m lost! I can’t get out!”

“It’s okay!” Hollyleaf called back. “We can hear you. You can’t be far away.”

“But I can’t find the right tunnel!”

“Just keep calm,” Hollyleaf instructed him. “Let your senses go still before you try again. Now taste the air for scent. Is it stronger in one direction?”

There was a pause before Toadstep answered, “I… I think so.”

“Okay, try that.”

A few heartbeats’ silence passed before Toadstep popped out of the tunnel entrance again. “Thank StarClan!” he exclaimed.

“If you get lost down here,” Hollyleaf addressed the whole group of cats, “it’s vital not to panic. There’s always something that will tell you the right way. Pay attention to the direction of the airflow. And if the air feels damp and heavy, that means the tunnel will go deeper.”

“And head for the light, right?” Ivypool added.

Hollyleaf hesitated. “Mostly… but don’t forget that some cracks reach far, far down into the rock. They don’t necessarily offer a way out. Like that one,” she added, gesturing with her tail toward the gap in the cave roof.

“What next?” Toadstep asked.

“Next we go back to camp,” Hollyleaf replied. “It’s been a really good session, but we’re all tired now.”

“We’ve learned a lot,” Dovewing meowed. “Thanks, Hollyleaf.”

Murmurs of agreement came from the other cats as Hollyleaf led them back through the tunnels. The sun was setting by the time they emerged, and shadows lay thick under the trees as they padded back through the twilit forest.

“Hollyleaf’s training will be really useful for night fighting, too,” Brackenfur remarked.

“Yeah, we could practice that,” Toadstep agreed eagerly. “I’ve got another idea, too. Down in the tunnels, we could think of ways of getting our enemies lost.”

Ivypool nodded. “Maybe work out a system of signs so that we know where we are but the WindClan cats don’t?”

“Or we could work on ways of luring them into an ambush,” Dovewing added, her pads tingling with excitement. “WindClan won’t know what hit them!”

As the entrance to the hollow came into sight, Toadstep halted and gazed through the shadowy trees toward the WindClan border. “Let them come!” he yowled, his neck fur bristling and his tail lashing. “We are ready!”

Chapter 22