Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 Fireheart sniffed warily at a path where the snow had been trampled down by Twolegs. Lights shone from the Twoleg nest, and somewhere close by he could hear a dog barking. He remembered Barley telling him that the Twolegs let their dogs off the chains at night. He just hoped that he could locate Ravenpaw before he and Graystripe were noticed. Graystripe slipped through the fence and padded up to him. The icy wind flattened his gray fur against his body. "Smell anything?" he asked. Fireheart lifted his head to taste the air, and almost at once he caught the scent he was searching for, faint but familiar. Ravenpaw! "This way," he mewed. He crept along the path, the hard surface icy under his paws. Cautiously he followed the scent to a gap at the bottom of a barn door where the wood had rotted away. He sniffed, drinking in the smell of hay and the strong, fresh scent of cats. "Ravenpaw?" he whispered. When there was no reply, he repeated, louder, "Ravenpaw?"

"Fireheart, is that you?" A surprised mew came from the darkness on the other side of the door. "Ravenpaw!" Fireheart squeezed through the gap, thankful to be out of the wind. The scents of the barn flowed around him, and his mouth began to water as he detected the smell of mouse. The barn was dimly lit by moonlight filtering through a small window high under the roof. As his eyes adjusted, Fireheart saw another cat standing a few tail-lengths away. His friend looked even sleeker and better fed than when Fireheart had seen him last. Fireheart realized how scrawny and bedraggled he must look in comparison. Ravenpaw purred happily as he padded over to Fireheart and touched noses with him. "Welcome," he mewed. "It's good to see you." "It's good to see you," Graystripe meowed, pushing his way through the gap in the door after Fireheart. "Did you get WindClan back to their camp safely?" Ravenpaw asked. Fireheart and Graystripe had stayed with him during their journey to bring WindClan home.

"Yes," mewed Fireheart, "but it's a long story. We can't—" "Well, what's going on here?" Another cat's meow interrupted them. Fireheart spun around, flattening his ears, ready to fight if this newcomer was a threat. Then he recognized Barley, the black-and-white loner who had willingly shared his home with Ravenpaw. "Hi, Barley," Fireheart meowed, calming down. "We need to talk to Ravenpaw." "So I see," Barley mewed. "And it must be important, to bring you across the moors in this weather." "Yes, it is," Fireheart agreed. He glanced at the former ThunderClan apprentice, the urgency of his mission prickling through his fur. "Ravenpaw, we haven't any time to waste." Ravenpaw looked puzzled. "You know you can talk to me as much as you want." "I'll leave you to it, then," Barley offered. "Feel free to hunt. We've plenty of mice here." He gave a friendly nod to the visiting cats, and squeezed out under the door. "Hunt? Really?" meowed Graystripe. Fireheart

felt sharp pangs of hunger grip his belly. "Of course," mewed Ravenpaw. "Look, why don't you eat first? Then you can tell me why you're here." "I know Tigerclaw killed Redtail," Ravenpaw insisted. "I was there, and I saw him do it." The three cats were crouched in the hayloft of the Twoleg barn. Hunting had not taken very long. After the desparate struggle to find prey in the snow-covered forest, the barn seemed to the hungry ThunderClan warriors to be overflowing with mice. Now Fireheart was warm, and his stomach felt comfortably full. He would have liked to curl up and sleep in the soft, fragrant hay, but he knew that he had to talk to Ravenpaw right away if he and Graystripe were to get back to camp before their absence was noticed. "Tell us everything you remember," he urged, giving Ravenpaw an encouraging nod. Ravenpaw stared ahead of him, his eyes dark as he journeyed back in his mind to the battle at the Sunningrocks. Fireheart could see his confidence beginning to ebb. The black cat was

losing himself in his memories, reliving the fear and the burden of what he knew. "I'd been wounded in the shoulder," he began, "and Redtail—he was our deputy then, as you know—told me to hide in a crack in the rock until it was safe to get away. I was just going to make a dash for it when I saw Redtail attack a RiverClan cat. I think it was that gray warrior called Stonefur. Redtail knocked Stonefur off his paws, and looked as if he was about to sink in his claws for some serious injury." "Why didn't he?" Graystripe put in. "Oakheart came out of nowhere," Ravenpaw explained. "He sank his teeth into Redtail's scruff and pulled him off Stonefur." His voice shook as the memories flooded through his mind's eye. "Stonefur ran away." The cat paused, unconsciously crouching down as if he were scared of something very close by. "What next?" Fireheart prompted gently. "Redtail spat at Oakheart. He asked him if RiverClan warriors were unable to fight their own battles. Redtail was brave," Ravenpaw added. "The RiverClan deputy was twice his size. And

then…then Oakheart said a strange thing. He told Redtail, 'No ThunderClan cat will ever harm that warrior.'" "What?" Graystripe narrowed his eyes until they were yellow slits. "That doesn't make sense. Are you sure you heard him right?" "Positive," insisted Ravenpaw. "But the Clans fight all the time," meowed Fireheart. "What's so special about Stonefur?" "I don't know." Ravenpaw shrugged, shying away from their searching questions. "So what did Redtail do after Oakheart said that?" asked Graystripe. Ravenpaw's ears pricked up and his eyes widened. "He flew at Oakheart. He bowled him right off his paws and underneath a rocky overhang. I…I couldn't see them, though I could hear them snarling. And then I heard a rumbling sound, and the rock collapsed on top of them!" He stopped, shivering. "Please go on," Fireheart mewed. He hated putting Ravenpaw through this, but he had to know the truth. "I heard a screech from Oakheart and I saw his