Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8 The sun was rising over the trees as Fireheart and his patrol approached Snakerocks, on the opposite side of the territory to the river. The fire had not reached this far; the undergrowth was still lush and green, though leaves had begun to fall. "Hold on," Fireheart meowed to Thornpaw as the apprentice dashed toward the rocks. "Don't forget there are adders around here." Thornpaw skidded to a halt. "Sorry, Fireheart." Since Bluestar had refused to make them warriors, Fireheart had made a point of spending time with all the apprentices in turn, including at least one of them in every patrol, in an attempt to show them that the Clan still valued them. Swiftpaw's scowl suggested that he was resentful of the delay, but Thornpaw did not seem to mind waiting for full warrior status. Mousefur, Thornpaw's mentor, padded up to him. "Tell me what you can smell." Thornpaw stood with his head raised and jaws parted, drinking in the air. "Mouse!" he mewed almost at once, swiping his tongue around his mouth.

"Yes, but we're not hunting now," Mousefur reminded him. "What else?" "The Thunderpath—over there." Thornpaw gestured with his tail. "And dog." Fireheart, who had been lapping water from a hollow in the ground, pricked up his ears. Tasting the air, he realized that Thornpaw was right. There was a strong scent of dog, and it was fresh. "That's odd," he commented. "Unless the Twolegs were up very early, that scent should be stale. Last night at the latest." He remembered Whitestorm's report of finding trampled undergrowth and scattered pigeon feathers near Snakerocks. The place had smelled of dog then, but that scent would not have survived for this long. "We'd better take a good look around," he meowed. Ordering Thornpaw not to leave his mentor, Fireheart sent the other cats into the trees while he crept closer to the rocks. Before he reached them, he was called back by Mousefur. "Come and look at this!" Skirting a bramble thicket, Fireheart joined the

brown warrior and looked down into a small, steep-sided clearing. There was a stagnant pool of greenish water at the bottom, choked with fallen leaves. The sharp scent of crushed ferns reached Fireheart's scent glands, but it was barely noticeable under the overpowering stench of dog. Pigeon feathers were scattered all around, and scraps of fur that might have been squirrel or rabbit. A little way down the slope, Thornpaw sniffed at a pile of dog dung, and recoiled with a snort of disgust. Fireheart forced himself to take in every detail of the scene. Twoleg dogs didn't usually stay in the forest long enough to leave this many traces, trampling the undergrowth and scattering the remains of prey until the forest reeked like a fox's hole. Seeing it with his own eyes made him realize that something was definitely wrong. "What do you think?" asked Mousefur. "I don't know." Fireheart was reluctant to voice his worries. "It looks as if there might be a dog loose in the forest, free from the Twolegs." Was that what those Twolegs had been looking for? he wondered, suddenly remembering the

three who had come in the monster when he was hunting in Tallpines with Sandstorm. But that had been a long way from here, on the other side of ThunderClan territory. "What are we going to do?" Thornpaw piped up, looking unusually serious. "I'll report it to Bluestar," Fireheart decided. "If there is a dog wandering around in our territory, we'll need to do something about it. Maybe we can lead it away somehow." The dog was clearly taking prey that ThunderClan couldn't spare, and Fireheart didn't like to think of what might happen if it met one of the Clan warriors face-to-face. As he turned away from the clearing and led the way back toward the camp, Fireheart could not help feeling that the forest around him had become strangely hostile. He knew every tree and stone, yet there was something in its depths—not quite a scent, nor a sound, more like an echo on the edge of hearing—that he did not understand. Was it just a dog? Or were Bluestar's fears about to come true after all? Did StarClan have some other disaster in mind for ThunderClan?

The patrol had almost reached the camp when Fireheart scented ThunderClan cats behind him. Turning, he saw Whitestorm, Brightpaw, and Cloudpaw picking their way through the blackened debris on the forest floor. All of them were carrying fresh-kill. "Good hunting?" Fireheart asked as they caught up with him. Whitestorm dropped the rabbit he was carrying. "Not bad," he replied. "But we had to go all the way to Fourtrees to find it." "Still, it looks good and fat," Fireheart meowed approvingly. "Well done," he added to Brightpaw and Cloudpaw, who were both dragging squirrels. "We saw something I think you ought to know about," mewed Whitestorm. "Let's get back to camp." The white warrior picked up his rabbit again and fell in behind Fireheart as he led the way down the ravine. Once they had deposited the fresh-kill on the pile and Fireheart had sent the apprentices off to feed the elders, he took a piece for himself and crouched beside Whitestorm to

eat it. Mousefur picked out a blackbird from the heap and came to join them. "So what did you see?" Fireheart asked, when a few mouthfuls of vole had taken the edge off the hunger in his belly. He saw Whitestorm's expression darken and guessed the answer before the white warrior spoke. "More scattered prey," Whitestorm meowed. "Scraps of rabbit fur. And more dog scent. Not far from Fourtrees this time, near the border with RiverClan." "Fresh scent?" "Yesterday's, I'd guess." Fireheart nodded, anxiety prickling in his paws. Clearly the dog had ranged much farther than he had first thought. Gulping down the last of his vole, he told Whitestorm what his dawn patrol had found that morning. "The whole place stank," Mousefur contributed, looking up from her meal. "There's a dog in our territory, isn't there, killing our prey?" "Yes, I think so." Fireheart turned to Whitestorm. "When you told me about the first lot of scent you found, I hoped that the dog