“But it’s a kittypet!” Foxleap protested. “I could beat it with one paw!”
“Come up here and try!” the kittypet yowled. “You’ve no business here, flea-pelts!”
“Are you going to let it talk to us like that?” Foxleap asked, outraged.
It was Jayfeather who replied. “Use the sense you were born with, Foxleap. If you get hurt, what am I supposed to do for you out here? Do we know where the nearest cobweb is? Can I find horsetail before you bleed to death?”
“But—” Foxleap was still glaring up at the kittypet.
“Ignore it. We keep moving. Now,” Squirrelflight meowed.
She turned and padded forward. Jayfeather lashed his tail, gesturing to Foxleap to follow. The young warrior obeyed, though not without a last angry hiss at the kittypet. Dove wing brought up the rear.
“Cowards!” the kittypet screeched after them. “Go away and stay away!”
Dovewing was relieved when they hurried out of earshot, but her relief vanished as Jayfeather turned to her.
“I wish you’d given us some warning,” he muttered.
“What?” Dovewing couldn’t believe he was blaming her for the encounter with the kittypet. “I don’t know this area,” she defended herself. “I can’t just listen for things up ahead, because I have to watch where I’m putting my paws!”
The medicine cat let out an annoyed growl and lapsed into sulky silence.
“I can scout ahead if you like,” Foxleap offered.
“Oh, fine.” Squirrelflight’s tone was sarcastic. “And then we arrive to find you’ve got into a fight. No thanks.”
“I won’t, honestly,” Foxleap promised.
“No.” Now Squirrelflight sounded calmer. “I trust you to obey orders, Foxleap, but it’s better if we stay together.”
The patrol walked on. Not much later, the line of a hedge crossed their path, the thorny bushes gray and bare, with grass tangled at their roots.
“We go through here,” Squirrelflight explained, “and cross the field beyond. But stay in the shelter of the hedge. It’s safer.”
Jayfeather murmured agreement. “We’re near the farm where Lionblaze and Hollyleaf had trouble with dogs,” he meowed. “Let’s keep a good lookout.” He gave Dovewing a hard gaze as he spoke.
Squirrelflight led the way along the hedge until they came to a gap between two bushes, big enough for a cat to squeeze through.
“Dovewing, you go first,” Jayfeather ordered.
“Who’s leading this patrol, Jayfeather?” Squirrelflight inquired. Turning to Dovewing, she added, “Okay, but be careful.”
Dovewing knew why Jayfeather had chosen her. She was already sending a tendril of her special senses through the hedge and into the field beyond. No dogs. But some other weird animals…oh, I know! Sheep. She remembered seeing them in the distance on her visit to WindClan. They won’t do us any harm.
Flattening herself on her belly, she crawled through the gap, feeling thorns rake through the fur on her back. Rising to her paws on the other side, she found herself facing two big white woolly animals, with sharp hooves and placid, incurious faces.
It feels strange seeing them so close, she thought. They look a bit mouse-brained.
“Dovewing?” Squirrelflight’s voice came anxiously through the hedge. “Are you okay?”
“Fine!” Dovewing replied. “You can come through.”
Jayfeather appeared next, shaking his ruffled pelt as he rose to his paws and stepped into the field. Foxleap followed him, and lastly Squirrelflight, panting as she pulled herself through the clustering thorns.
“See?” she mewed triumphantly as she straightened up. “I’m not stuck!” Then she looked disconcerted.
It’s like she was talking to a cat who isn’t here, Dovewing thought.
Shaking her head as if to clear it, Squirrelflight led the patrol along the line of the hedge. The field was huge; Dovewing couldn’t even see the other side. Everything’s so big here, she thought, suppressing a shiver. I can’t even see the edges of the sky.
Suddenly loud barking clattered into her ears. She froze, astonished for a heartbeat that the rest of the patrol were quietly plodding on. The scent of dog filled her nostrils. Then she realized that her special senses were giving her advance warning. “Dog!” she yowled. “Take cover!”
Squirrelflight whipped around, gazing across the field. “Where?”
“Over there.”
As Dovewing stretched out her tail to point, a dog appeared at the crest of a gentle rise in the middle of the field. Yapping loudly, it raced toward the cats, its tail flying and the wind ruffling its black-and-white pelt.
“Fox dung!” Squirrelflight hissed. “Dovewing, Foxleap, get Jayfeather into the hedge.”
Foxleap was already pushing Jayfeather into the bushes. Dovewing spotted a branch where the thorns weren’t quite so thick, and slid into the hedge beside Jayfeather. “Put your paws there,” she ordered, guiding him with her tail. “Now climb!”
As Jayfeather hauled himself upward, spitting annoyance, Dovewing glanced back to see Squirrelflight standing with her back to the hedge. Her fur was fluffed out so that she looked twice her size; her back was arched and she was snarling as the dog galloped closer.
“Stay back, mange-pelt!” she growled.
Safe for the moment in the tangle of bushes, Dovewing admired Squirrelflight’s courage. She thought of Jayfeather first, she mused, remembering the stories of how the ginger warrior had raised Jayfeather and his littermates as if they were her own, even though Leafpool was their real mother.
Squirrelflight still feels as if she is their mother, Dovewing realized with a pang of sympathy. Even now.
Peering out through the thorny branches, she saw that the dog had halted in front of Squirrelflight, letting out a flurry of excited yelps but not making any move to attack. StarClan, please make it go away.
“Oh, no!” Foxleap’s voice broke in on her prayer.
Dovewing peered out again and saw another dog crest the rise and bound across the field toward them. Two of them!
They’re bound to attack now.
Squirrelflight stayed on guard, and Dovewing started to struggle out of the thorns again to help her. But before she cleared the hedge, the second dog halted beside the first and started barking at him. Noticing that his muzzle was gray with age, Dovewing realized that the second dog was much older. “He sounds like a mentor telling off an apprentice!” she whispered to Foxleap.
The younger dog crouched low to the ground and let out a whimper. After a few heartbeats, while all the cats waited tensely, both dogs turned and ran off across the field. They started to run after the scattered sheep, herding them into a flock.
“He did!” Foxleap’s eyes were sparkling with amusement. “He said, ‘Leave those cats alone, you stupid furball, and get on with the job!’”
Sighing with relief, Dovewing clambered out of the hedge, while Foxleap helped Jayfeather down. The medicine cat emerged into the open with a grunt of indignation, craning his neck to pick debris out of his pelt.
“I’ve got a thorn in my pad,” he muttered. “Some cat look for a dock leaf.”
Dovewing detected the scent of a clump of dock at the bottom of the hedge and tore off a couple of leaves to give to Jayfeather. While he rubbed the soothing juice on his pad, she sent her senses out after the dogs and the sheep. They had disappeared from view, but she could still track them; the dogs were herding the sheep in a tight cluster to the far end of the field and through a gap into another field. A Twoleg was with them.
“I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with them,” she mewed.
“I hope you’re right.” Squirrelflight was smoothing down her pelt. She was the only one of them not to look shaken. “We’ll get out of this field and then make camp for the night,” the ginger warrior went on. “We could all do with a rest after that.”