“But it’s not,” Bramblestar pointed out, swiping his tongue around his whiskers. “Not according to the warrior code. My loyalty should be to my own Clanmates, no other cats.”
Graystripe snorted. “There’s such a thing as basic decency,” he pointed out.
“What would you have done?” Bramblestar asked.
“Followed Firestar,” Graystripe replied without hesitation.
While Bramblestar was thinking that over, Purdy ambled out of the tunnel and settled down beside him. “Y’know, this reminds me of when I was a young cat, livin’ with my Upwalker,” he began.
Bramblestar suppressed a sigh. Purdy, this isn’t the time for one of your long-winded stories. But there was no stopping Purdy, who embarked on a complicated tale of how he had helped a cat in the den next door deal with his Upwalker’s new dog, and how the cat had then crept into Purdy’s den and stolen his food.
“Well, I said to myself, I’m not puttin’ up with that, so I…”
Bramblestar stopped listening as a clump of fern at the edge of the clearing shivered and Leafpool emerged. Her fur was ruffled and she had an agitated air.
Bramblestar bounded across the clearing to her side. “Leafpool! Are you okay?”
“Rowanstar asked me to leave!” Leafpool’s eyes were sparkling with indignation. “He said he’d had enough of ThunderClan interference. Bramblestar, what have you done?”
Ivypool and Cinderheart appeared from the tunnel at that moment, their wounds treated with cobwebs and poultices of marigold. They helped Bramblestar explain to Leafpool what had happened in the battle with the kittypets.
“How could you be so mouse-brained?” Leafpool sighed, shaking her head. “The medicine-cat code extends to helping other Clans, but not the warrior code. You should stop trying to imagine what Firestar would have done, and be true to yourself.”
“And Lionblaze is badly hurt,” Cinderheart added.
“What?” Leafpool paused for a heartbeat, her eyes stretched wide with shock. Then without another word she raced to the tunnel and vanished inside.
Be true to myself? Bramblestar thought, looking after her glumly. His responsibilities weighed as heavy on his shoulders as if he were trying to carry the whole forest.
I wish I knew how.
Chapter 23
Bramblestar sat in the shelter of a hazel bush, watching Minty creep up on a mouse. Frankie and Jessy, the other members of the patrol, were watching from farther around the edge of the clearing.
I can’t believe this! Bramblestar thought wryly. A hunting patrol of kittypets!
But in the quarter moon since the expedition into ShadowClan’s hunting grounds, all three of them were improving their tracking skills—even Minty, who had the twin advantages of being small and light-pawed. The mouse, nibbling something among the roots of a beech tree, had no idea that she was stalking it. She had even remembered to check the wind direction.
Suddenly Minty leaped forward and trapped the mouse under an outstretched paw. “Got it!” she exclaimed.
The mouse let out a squeal of terror.
“Oh, poor thing!” Minty sprang back, raising her paw, and the mouse scuttled off.
Frankie shook his head with an exaggerated sigh, then took off after the mouse and killed it with a quick blow to the head.
“Neat catch!” Bramblestar praised him as he padded back with the body dangling from his jaws.
Minty’s head was hanging as she rejoined the patrol. “I’m sorry,” she mewed. “It freaks me out when they squeal.”
“It doesn’t freak you out anymore when you eat them, though,” Jessy pointed out.
“I know. I’ll try to do better next time,” Minty promised.
“Your stalking was very good,” Bramblestar told her. “Why don’t you see if you can scent some more prey?”
Obediently Minty began sniffing around, and soon picked up another scent trail, following it across the clearing with her nose to the ground.
“Well done!” Bramblestar called to her.
“This is odd,” Minty muttered. “I don’t know this scent, but it must be prey, right?”
Bramblestar and the others watched as she vanished among some brambles at the other side of the clearing, then froze with only her hindquarters and her tail sticking out. Feeling his pelt begin to prickle with apprehension, Bramblestar opened his jaws to taste the air. In the same heartbeat, Minty began to back slowly out of the thicket.
“Er… this isn’t prey at all,” she mewed.
The reek of fox hit Bramblestar in the throat as a snarl sounded from the midst of the brambles. Minty turned and fled across the clearing, her belly fur brushing the grass and her tail streaming out. A young fox exploded out of the thicket behind her.
“Stay back!” Bramblestar snapped at the kittypets.
Bounding forward, Bramblestar met the fox at the center of the clearing and reared up on his hind legs to rake the claws of both forepaws across the fox’s muzzle. The fox let out a bark of mingled pain and surprise, and lunged at Bramblestar, its jaws gaping. Bramblestar ducked aside and managed to land a blow on the fox’s flank before he darted back out of range.
The fox whirled to follow him, but it was already looking confused. It didn’t expect its prey to fight back, Bramblestar thought with satisfaction as he dashed in again and clawed its ears with a swift slash of his paw. Letting out a high-pitched screech of terror, the fox backed off, then spun around and fled out of the clearing, vanishing among a thick clump of ferns. At the same moment another ThunderClan hunting patrol raced into the clearing, with Mousewhisker in the lead.
“We heard the fight!” Mousewhisker gasped. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Bramblestar panted. “Take your patrol and follow it,” he added, “all the way to its den.”
“Right.” Mousewhisker waved his tail to the rest of his patrol, and vanished into the ferns on the trail of the fox.
It’s a good thing they turned up, Bramblestar thought. We can’t hope to clear all the forest of foxes, but we need to know where they are, especially now that we’re hunting across the border.
The three kittypets crowded around Bramblestar, their eyes wide with shock.
“That was amazing!” Frankie exclaimed.
“I never thought a cat could take on a fox like that,” Jessy added, her eyes glowing. “It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“It wasn’t hard,” Bramblestar mewed, wanting to scuffle his paws in the earth like an embarrassed apprentice. “It was a young fox, and easy to confuse. Besides, it’s quite common for us to have to chase off a fox or a badger.”
“A badger!” Minty squeaked. “Purdy told me about those. They’re huge!” She glanced around her fearfully as if she expected a massive black-and-white animal to erupt out of the bushes at any moment.
“Believe me, they’re really rare,” Bramblestar reassured. “We chased the badgers out of the forest a long time ago. But I can show you a few techniques to keep in mind, if you like.”
Minty took a pace back, looking as if she might never leave the tunnels again. But Jessy and Frankie both pricked their ears with interest.
“Yes, show us,” Frankie mewed. “You never know; we might meet something nasty.”
“Mostly you use the fighting techniques you’re already learning,” Bramblestar explained. “But you need to practice dashing in to strike and then away again, like I did just now. That works even better with badgers, because they’re slower than foxes. Another move you can try is to spring onto the badger’s back. You can claw it to your heart’s content up there, and it can’t get at you.”