As they headed out of the camp, the two young warriors nearly crashed into Whitestorm, who was leading Sandpaw and Runningwind into the forest for the dawn patrol.
“Sorry!” panted Fireheart. He stopped, and Graystripe skidded to a halt beside him.
Whitestorm dipped his head. “I hear you two are going on a mission,” he meowed.
“Yes,” Fireheart replied.
“Then may you have StarClan’s protection,” meowed Whitestorm gravely.
“What for?” Sandpaw sneered. “You off to catch voles?”
Runningwind, a lean tabby, turned and whispered something into Sandpaw’s ear. Her expression changed and the contempt in her green eyes switched to guarded curiosity.
The patrol stepped aside to let Fireheart and Graystripe pass. The pair raced on and scrambled up the side of the ravine.
Fireheart and Graystripe shared few words as they followed the route through the forest to Fourtrees, saving their breath for the long journey ahead. They paused at the top of the steep slope on the far side of the oak-shaded clearing, their sides heaving from the climb.
“Is it always windy up here?” grumbled Graystripe, fluffing out his thick fur against the blast of cold air that swept across the uplands.
“I suppose there aren’t any trees to block it,” Fireheart pointed out, screwing up his eyes. This was WindClan’s territory. As Fireheart sniffed the air, he detected a scent that all of his senses told him should not be there. “Do you smell RiverClan warriors?” he murmured uneasily.
Graystripe lifted his nose. “No. Do you think there might be some here?”
“Maybe. They might want to make the most of WindClan’s absence, especially since they know WindClan will be back soon,” Fireheart warned.
“Well, I can’t smell anything now,” whispered Graystripe.
The two friends padded watchfully along a frozen turf trail sheltered by heather.
A fresh scent stopped Fireheart in his tracks. “Can you smell that?” he hissed to Graystripe.
“Yes,” whispered Graystripe, flattening himself against the ground. “RiverClan!”
Fireheart dropped into a crouch, keeping his ears below the heather. Beside him, Graystripe lifted his dark gray head to peer over the bushes. “I can see them,” he murmured. “They’re hunting.”
Fireheart stretched up cautiously to look.
Four RiverClan warriors were chasing a rabbit through a patch of gorse. Fireheart recognized Blackclaw from the Gathering. The smoky-black warrior pounced, his claws unsheathed, but sat up again with nothing to show for the chase. The rabbit must have made it to the safety of her warren.
Fireheart and Graystripe dropped down again and pressed their bellies against the cold turf.
“They’re not good rabbit hunters,” Graystripe hissed scornfully.
“I guess RiverClan is more used to catching fish,” Fireheart whispered back. His nose twitched as he smelled the scent of a terrified rabbit coming nearer. With a pang of dread, Fireheart heard the pawsteps of the RiverClan warriors fast approaching after it. “They’re coming this way! We’ll have to hide!”
“Follow me,” whispered Graystripe. “I smell badgers this way.”
“Badgers?” Fireheart echoed. “Is that safe?” He’d heard the story of how Halftail had lost his tail in a fight with a bad-tempered old badger.
“Don’t worry. The scent is strong but stale,” Graystripe reassured him. “There must be an old set near here.”
Fireheart sniffed. His scent glands picked up a strong, almost foxlike scent. “Are you sure it’s abandoned?”
“We’ll know soon enough. Come on; we’ve got to get out of here,” replied Graystripe. He led the way quickly through the low bushes. The rustle of heather told Fireheart the RiverClan warriors were closing in.
“Here!” Graystripe shouldered aside a tuft of heather to reveal a sandy hole in the ground. “Get inside! The badger’s scent will disguise ours. We can wait till they’re gone.”
Fireheart slipped speedily into the dark hole, and Graystripe followed him. The stench of badger was overwhelming.
Pawsteps thudded on the ground overhead. Both cats held their breath as the steps halted and one of the RiverClan warriors yowled, “Badger set!” From the rasping mew, Fireheart knew it was Blackclaw.
A second voice answered: “Is it abandoned? The rabbit may be hiding inside.”
Fireheart felt Graystripe’s fur bristling beside him in the dark. He unsheathed his claws and stared at the entrance to the hole, ready to fight if the warriors came inside.
“Wait; the scent leads this way,” meowed Blackclaw. There was a scrabble of paws overhead as the RiverClan warriors charged away.
Graystripe slowly let out his breath. “D’you think they’re gone?”
“Perhaps we should wait a bit longer, make sure none of them stayed behind,” Fireheart suggested.
No more noises came from outside. Graystripe nudged Fireheart. “Come on,” he meowed.
Fireheart followed Graystripe cautiously out into the daylight. There was no sign of the RiverClan patrol. The fresh breeze cleared Fireheart’s scent glands of the badger stench. “We should look for the WindClan camp,” he meowed to Graystripe. “It’ll be the best place to pick up their scent.”
“Okay,” answered Graystripe.
They moved slowly through the heather, keeping their mouths slightly open to pick up the scent of any more RiverClan warriors. They stopped at the foot of a large flat rock that sloped up steeply, past the tops of the gorse bushes.
“I’ll climb up and have a look around,” offered Graystripe. “My pelt will blend better with the stone.”
“Okay,” Fireheart agreed. “But keep your head down.”
He watched his friend creep up the rock. Graystripe crouched at the top and gazed around the plateau, then skidded back down to Fireheart. “There’s a hollow over there, I think,” Graystripe puffed, signaling with his tail. “I can see a gap in the heather.”
“Let’s check it out,” meowed Fireheart. “It could be the camp.”
“That’s what I thought.” Graystripe nodded. “It’s probably the only place up here that’s sheltered from the wind.”
As they neared the hollow, Fireheart raced past Graystripe and gazed over the edge. It looked as if a StarClan warrior had reached down from the sky, scooped a pawful of peat from the plateau, and replaced it with a thick tangle of gorse that grew almost to the level of the ground on either side.
Fireheart sniffed. He could smell many scents, all WindClan, old and young, male and female, and, in the background, the faint odor of fresh-kill that had long since become crow-food. This had to be the abandoned camp.
Fireheart bounded down the slope and plunged into the bushes. The gorse tugged at his fur and scratched his nose, making his eyes water. He could hear Graystripe behind him, cursing as thorns snagged his ears. They pushed through into a sheltered clearing. The sandy ground had been trodden hard by generations of paws. At one end of the clearing stood a rock, worn smooth by many windblown moons.
“This is their camp, all right,” Fireheart murmured.
“I can’t believe Brokenstar managed to drive WindClan out of such a well-protected place!” meowed Graystripe, rubbing his sore nose with one paw.
“It looks like they put up a good fight,” Fireheart pointed out, realizing with a jolt how badly ravaged the camp was. Clumps of fur littered the ground, and dried blood stained the sand. Mossy nests had been dragged out of dens and torn apart. And everywhere, stale ShadowClan scents mingled with the smell of terrified WindClan cats.
Fireheart shuddered. “Let’s find the scent trail out of here,” he meowed. He began to sniff the air carefully and moved forward, following the strongest scent. Graystripe padded after him to a narrow gap in the gorse.
“WindClan cats must be even smaller than I remember!” grumbled Graystripe as he squeezed through after Fireheart.
Fireheart glanced at his friend, amused for a moment. The scent trail was quite clear now—definitely WindClan, but mixed and pungent, as if made by many frightened cats. Fireheart looked down. Drops of dried blood dotted the ground. “We’re heading the right way,” he meowed darkly. Two moons of rain and wind had failed to wash away the signs of suffering. Fireheart could clearly picture the defeated and injured Clan fleeing from its home. With a surge of anger he bounded after his friend.
The trail led them to the far edge of the uplands, where they stopped to catch their breath. In front of them the ground sloped away to the Twoleg farmland. Far in the distance, where the sun was beginning to set, loomed the towering shapes of Highstones.
“I wonder if Nightpelt is there yet,” Fireheart murmured. In a tunnel below Highstones lay the sacred Moonstone, where the leaders of each Clan shared dreams with StarClan.
“Well, we don’t want to find him down there!” Graystripe flicked his tail at the wide expanse of Twoleg land. “It’ll be hard enough dodging Twolegs, rats, and dogs, without meeting the new ShadowClan leader as well!”
Fireheart nodded. He thought back to their last journey across this land, with Bluestar and Tigerclaw. They had almost been killed by an attack of rats, and only the arrival of Barley, the loner, had saved them. Even so, Bluestar had lost one of her lives; the memory of it stung Fireheart like a wood ant.
“Do you think we’ll find any trace of Ravenpaw down there?” Graystripe meowed, turning his broad face toward Fireheart.
“I hope so,” Fireheart replied solemnly. The last he had seen of Ravenpaw had been the white tip of his tail disappearing into the storm on the uplands. Had the ThunderClan apprentice made it safely to Barley’s territory?
The two warriors started down the slope, carefully sniffing each clump of grass to make sure they stayed on the WindClan trail.
“It doesn’t look as if they were heading for Highstones,” Graystripe remarked. The trail took them sideways into a wide grassy field. They skirted the edge, staying near the hedgerow as WindClan had done. The scent led them out of the field and onto a Twoleg path through a small copse of trees.
“Look!” Graystripe meowed. Sun-bleached piles of prey bones lay scattered in the undergrowth. Mossy bedding had been gathered beneath the thickest patches of brambles.
“WindClan must have tried to settle here,” Fireheart meowed in surprise.
“I wonder what made them leave?” asked Graystripe, sniffing the air. “The scent is old.”
Fireheart shrugged and the two cats followed the trail onward to a thick hedge. With a bit of a struggle, they wriggled through onto a grass verge. Beyond a narrow ditch lay a wide earth track.
Graystripe leaped nimbly over the ditch and onto the hard red track. Fireheart looked around, stiffening as he recognized a hard-edged silhouette in the distance. “Graystripe! Stop!” he hissed.
“What’s up?”
Fireheart pointed with his nose. “Look at that Twoleg-place over there! We must be near Barley’s territory.”
Graystripe’s ears twitched nervously. “That’s where those dogs live! But WindClan definitely came this way. We’ll have to hurry. We need to get past the Twoleg nest before sunset.”
Fireheart remembered Barley telling them that the Twolegs let the dogs loose at night, and the sun was already sinking toward the craggy tops of Highstones. He nodded. “Perhaps the dogs chased WindClan out of the woods.” With an anxious twinge, he thought of Ravenpaw. “Do you think he found Barley?” he asked.
“Who? Ravenpaw? Why not? We made it this far!” meowed Graystripe. “Don’t underestimate him. Remember the time Tigerclaw sent him to Snakerocks? He came back with an adder!”
Fireheart purred at the memory as Graystripe leaped across the track and through the hedge on the far side. Fireheart chased after him, quickening his pace to match his friend step for step.
A dog barked furiously from the Twoleg nest, but its vicious snarling soon faded into the distance. The temperature plunged as the sun set, and frost began to form on the grass.
“Should we keep going?” asked Graystripe. “What if the trail takes us to Highstones after all? Nightpelt will definitely be there by now.”
Fireheart lifted his nose and sniffed the browning fronds of some ferns. The smell of WindClan, sour with fear, pricked at him. “We’d better keep going,” he meowed. “We’ll stop when we have to.”
The cold breeze carried another odor to Fireheart’s nose—there was a Thunderpath nearby. Graystripe screwed up his face. He’d smelled it too. The warriors exchanged a look of dismay, but pushed on. The stench grew stronger and stronger until they could hear the roar of Thunderpath monsters in the distance. By the time they reached the hedge that ran alongside the wide gray path, it was hard to make out the WindClan trail at all.
Graystripe stopped and looked around, uncertainty showing in his eyes. But Fireheart could just make out the fear-scent. He crept through the shadows beside the hedge until he reached a place where the hedge was less thick. “They sheltered here,” Fireheart meowed, imagining the terrified WindClan cats staring through the hedge at the Thunderpath.
“This was probably the first time most of them had seen the Thunderpath,” Graystripe remarked as he joined Fireheart by the hedge.
Fireheart looked at his friend in surprise. He had never met a WindClan cat—they had been driven out of their territory almost as soon as he had become an apprentice. “Didn’t they patrol their borders?” he asked, puzzled.
“You’ve seen their territory—it’s pretty wild and barren, and the prey’s not easy to catch. I guess they never thought any of the other Clans would bother hunting there. After all, RiverClan has their river, and, in a good year, our forests are filled with prey, so no cat needs their skinny rabbits.”
A monster roared past on the other side of the hedge, its night eyes glaring. Fireheart and Graystripe flinched as the wind buffeted their fur even through the wall of leaves. When the noise had faded away, they sat up cautiously and sniffed around the roots of the hedge.
“The trail seems to lead under here.” Fireheart squeezed onto the grass verge that lay along the Thunderpath. Graystripe scrabbled through behind him.
But on the other side of the hedge the scent trail stopped abruptly.
“They must have either doubled back or crossed the Thunderpath,” Fireheart meowed. “You look around here, and I’ll check out the other side.” He fought to keep his voice calm, but exhaustion was making him desperate. Surely they couldn’t have lost the trail now, after coming so far?