Just then, a loud caterwaul sounded in Hawkwing’s ears. “Back off! Run!”
The weight on top of him abruptly vanished. Hauling himself up, Hawkwing saw the two remaining she-cats fleeing for the ferns, with the ginger tom hard on their paws. The silver-gray leader, still yowling his orders to retreat, brought up the rear. Darktail, charging after him, managed to get in a couple of blows on the tom’s hindquarters before he vanished into the undergrowth.
Waspwhisker huffed out a long breath. “Cowards!”
Hawkwing was surprised that the fight had ended so quickly.
He had thought that the two groups were well matched, and he had never imagined that the rogues would give up so easily.
But Darktail showed their leader a thing or two, he reflected.
That mange-pelt couldn’t stand up to him!
Hawkwing watched the final quivers of the ferns as the rogues beat a retreat, then turned to Waspwhisker. “Are you still doubtful about Darktail?” he asked. “Look how bravely he fought!”
Waspwhisker let out a grunt. “That was well fought,” he mewed, with a nod to Darktail. “But if the rogue had moved a bit faster, what would you have done then? He’d have had you at his mercy.”
Darktail looked up from grooming his shoulder, where a tuft of fur had been torn away. “I’d worry about that if it happened,” he replied calmly.
Waspwhisker turned away with a single twitch of his tail, showing he was still unconvinced. Hawkwing let out a growl of annoyance at the older warrior’s grudging praise of the cat who had probably won them the battle, then instantly regretted it.
Waspwhisker was a good mentor to Duskpaw, he told himself.
I don’t want to fight with him. I just wish some of my Clanmates would give Darktail a break.
M eanwhile, Waspwhisker was looking over the rest of the patrol, checking them for injuries. Every cat was carrying a few scratches, but none of them was badly injured.
“Right, let’s finish marking the border,” he growled. “And then we’ll get back to camp and report this.”
Padding along the new border with his Clanmates, Hawkwing’s mind went back to his earlier decision not to mention that he had seen Darktail leaving Twoleg food on SkyClan territory.
He fought so well against the rogues, he thought. He can’t mean any harm to SkyClan. Maybe I should just ask him what it was all about.
“Darktail,” he began, falling in beside the white tom, “I saw you yesterday near the Twolegplace.” No need to let him know I followed him there. “It looked like you had some Twoleg food…”
Darktail gave him a sidelong glance, half guilty and half amused.
“I’ve been around a few kittypets in my time,” he admitted. “And
I kind of got a taste for Twoleg scraps. Don’t tell any cat, will you? I think Waspwhisker would claw my ears off!”
“Uh… no. But that doesn’t explain why you left—”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about those rogues,” Darktail interrupted, as if he had dismissed the whole question of the Twoleg food. “I wonder if there are any more of them around.
M aybe Leafstar should set a watch.”
As Darktail moved on with the patrol, Hawkwing stopped and raised his head to sniff the air, catching a sweetish, rotting smell coming from the edge of a nearby bramble thicket. He bounded over to take a look, and spotted more Twoleg food there, crumbling away into pieces as if the flesh it was made of had been clawed into tiny scraps and then somehow mashed back together. It was beginning to rot; Hawkwing guessed that it had been there for two or three days.
“Hey, Darktail, have you seen—” Hawkwing began, but as he turned he realized that while he was investigating the Twoleg food the rest of the patrol had moved on.
Hawkwing picked up the pace to catch them up, and found
Darktail chatting amiably to Bellapaw. Pleased that for once
Darktail was having a friendly conversation with a SkyClan cat, Hawkwing didn’t interrupt.
There’s no point, he told himself. What’s a bit of Twoleg food?
Every cat would think I had bees in my brain if I made a fuss about it.
Chapter 14
As soon as Waspwhisker led the patrolling cats back into camp, he bounded over to Leafstar, who was sharing fresh-kill with Sharpclaw at the foot of the Rockpile. Hawkwing and the others followed; Hawkwing noticed that several of his Clanmates, sunning themselves on the rocks nearby, sat up with ears pricked at the patrol’s rapid approach.
Pebblepaw was among them, licking one paw and drawing it over her ears to give them a thorough wash.
She looks so cute when she does that! Hawkwing thought, then instantly felt ashamed of himself. I shouldn’t be thinking like that when the Clan is in danger!
“Leafstar,” Waspwhisker announced breathlessly as he halted in front of the Clan leader, “rogues attacked us in the forest!”
Instantly Leafstar sprang to her paws. “What? Where? Tell me everything!”
“Just where we were setting the new border markers,” Waspwhisker explained, while more of the SkyClan cats gathered around to listen. “There were five of them, led by a huge silver-gray brute.”
“We told them to get off our territory,” Hawkwing added. “But they wouldn’t go, so we had to fight them. We—”
He was interrupted by a storm of questions and protests from his Clanmates, who pressed closer around the patrol, their fur bristling at the news of the attack.
“First raccoons, now rogues! What next?”
“How dare they? This is our place!”
“Are we still safe here?”
Drawn by the clamor, more SkyClan warriors appeared from their dens, scrambling down the trail or leaping from rock to rock until the stretch of ground beside the Rockpile was a heaving mass of cats.
Hawkwing found that Pebblepaw was by his side, gazing at him with anxious eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Hawkwing felt a hint of warmth deep in his belly that Pebblepaw was concerned for him. “I’m fine,” he replied. “Just a bit bruised.”
Pebblepaw still held him with her gaze, making Hawkwing feel awkward and yet strangely excited. “That’s good,” she murmured at last.
Before Hawkwing could respond, Leafstar fought her way through the crowd of cats and jumped up the mass of boulders until she stood at the top, with Sharpclaw close behind her.
“Cats of SkyClan!” she yowled, flourishing her tail for silence.
“Listen to me!”
But several moments passed until the caterwauling died down enough for the Clan leader to make herself heard.
“It’s vital that we don’t panic,” she began. “Waspwhisker, did you drive the rogues away?”
“We did,” Waspwhisker replied with a lash of his tail.
“But they’ll be back!” Sagenose called out from the crowd.
“Yes, how long can we keep fighting?” Nettlesplash asked.
“And what about the kits?” Birdwing added.
The Clan erupted again into renewed clamor, until Cherrytail leaped onto a boulder beside the stream and managed to raise her voice above her Clanmates’.
“Leafstar, the whole of the Clan should hunt down these rogues immediately,” she meowed. “We have to teach them that they can’t mess with SkyClan!”
His mother’s words woke a fire of determination inside
Hawkwing. “Yes!” he yowled, kneading the ground eagerly with his forepaws. “Let’s do it!”