Sagewhisker emerged from the den with a bundle of herbs. “Come on,” she mewed, her voice muffled by the leaves. “We have to be ready to go with them.”
“We’re going too?” Yellowfang asked, startled.
Sagewhisker nodded. “We’ll treat injuries as they occur, but stay out of the way of the fighting. That’s up to the warriors, okay?” Her eyes were stern, and Yellowfang knew she was giving her an unspoken reminder that she was a medicine cat now.
Yellowfang went back into the den and loaded up with herbs and cobweb. The sticky strands made her sneeze as she tried to pick them up. The rats will hear me coming long before we get anywhere near Carrionplace, she thought, frustrated. Then she realized she could stick the clumps of cobweb to her thick pelt, far enough from her muzzle that they didn’t make her sneeze, and went out again to join Sagewhisker, feeling pleased at her new idea.
The last of the patrols were already heading out of the camp. Yellowfang and Sagewhisker brought up the rear, following the warriors through the sparse, leaf-bare trees and across the marsh. The air was mild, and the persistent ice of leaf-bare was beginning to thaw; Yellowfang hissed in annoyance when she put her paw straight through one sheet of it into the freezing water below. After that she and Sagewhisker leaped from clump to clump of grass to keep their paws dry.
At last they drew close to the Carrionplace. Yellowfang could smell its stink before she saw the dark heaps looming up in front of her. Like before, the yellow monsters were quiet; the only sound came from big white birds that flapped and shrieked above the piles of waste.
While the patrols approached the Twoleg fence, Sagewhisker cast around among the bushes at the edge of the marsh.
“What are you doing?” Yellowfang asked.
“Finding a place under a bush,” the medicine cat replied, “where we can store our herbs and stay out of sight during the fighting.”
“So we’ll be hiding?” Yellowfang mewed in dismay. That feels like we’re cowards!
“No.” Sagewhisker’s eyes were sympathetic as she gazed at Yellowfang. “We’ll be keeping ourselves safe for when our Clanmates need us.”
Yellowfang still thought it was a strange way to behave, but she made no protest, and wriggled underneath a holly bush to lay out the herbs and cobweb they had brought. Her paws tingled with the urge to help as she watched Raggedpelt and his patrol pad up to the Twoleg fence. Raggedpelt found a hole in the silver mesh, and he and Featherstorm enlarged it with their teeth and claws to let cats in and rats out. Meanwhile, Foxheart and Wolfstep started dragging branches up to build the trap.
“Look what we found!” Newtspeck called from the edge of the marsh. She, Frogtail, and Lizardstripe were rolling a small tree trunk in front of them. “We managed to pull it out of the ground,” she panted as they reached the fence. “Its roots are rotten, so it wasn’t hard. I thought it would make a good vantage point for us to stand and jump down on the rats.”
Raggedpelt nodded. “You’re right; it will.”
As the walls of the trap took shape he checked them carefully, leaping up on top to make sure they would bear a cat’s weight. At one point the wall collapsed under him; Yellowfang gasped as he vanished in a whirl of flailing limbs and flying branches. But a moment later he crawled out, shaking debris from his pelt.
“Build it up again,” he ordered, “and put a stronger branch at the bottom this time.”
Raggedpelt stepped back while the rest of his patrol worked on the repairs. Yellowfang slipped out from under the holly bush and padded over to him. “Good luck,” she murmured.
Raggedpelt looked at her. “I wish you were fighting alongside me,” he mewed.
Yellowfang turned her head away. “I will be here,” she whispered.
She expected that Raggedpelt would walk away from her in disgust; instead she felt his nose touch her ear. “I’ll see you after the battle,” he promised.
A screech sounded from somewhere inside the Carrionplace, telling Raggedpelt that the other patrols were in place. Raggedpelt checked that his own patrol was ready, then yowled in reply.
“Yellowfang! Over here!”
Yellowfang looked around to see Sagewhisker beckoning to her from under the bush. Reluctantly she bounded back to join her, but stayed outside the branches to watch the attack. She realized she was holding her breath.
Silence followed the yowls, broken after a few heartbeats by faint sounds of scrabbling and hissing. The cats are chasing the rats out of their dens in the waste! Then Yellowfang heard squeaks growing rapidly louder, and the sound of scratching paws. She craned her neck forward, peering through the silver mesh.
Suddenly Yellowfang spotted a rat hurtling out of the heap of waste. It swerved away from the hole that Raggedpelt’s patrol had made, but was driven back on course by Nutwhisker leaping down to block its way. The first rat was followed by more, and more and more—more rats than Yellowfang had ever seen before. At the same time, cats began to appear, leaping down from the waste to steer the rats toward the hole in the mesh.
Raggedpelt’s patrol was waiting on top of the barriers, crouched and ready to pounce. The rats swirled at the base of the fence, beginning to panic as they realized they were trapped. Yellowfang saw Brackenfoot jump into the center of the heaving mass and shove one toward the hole.
“That way, stupid flea-pelt!” he snarled.
The other rats fled after it, thinking they had found a way of escape. But their squeaks grew louder when they realized that cats were waiting on that side of the fence, too. Raggedpelt’s patrol jumped down one by one, grabbing a rat and dealing the deathblow, and scrambling back out with the fresh-kill in their jaws.
“It’s working!” Foxheart yowled.
“Watch out for their teeth!” Wolfstep panted as he dragged out a rat almost as big as he was.
It’s all happening so fast! Yellowfang thought, her gaze fixed on Raggedpelt. She held her breath every time he disappeared down into the trap, and let out a gasp of relief when he reappeared with a dead rat.
Then a yelp from beyond the fence distracted her. Yellowfang let out a wail of fear when she saw that the cats on the far side of the fence were surrounded. More and more rats had poured out of the pile, too many to fit into the trap. With nowhere to escape, they had turned on the warriors, clawing and biting, and the warriors were badly outnumbered, trapped against the fence while waves of rats crashed over them.
Raggedpelt was the first in his patrol to notice what was happening. “Stop killing!” he yowled. “We have to help the others!”
But the hole in the fence was blocked by terrified rats; Raggedpelt and his cats had to scramble over the silver mesh in a desperate attempt to help their Clanmates.
Yellowfang’s belly clenched as Stonetooth went down with a couple of huge rats clinging to him. More cats rushed to help him, but the swarming rats blocked their way. Cedarstar disappeared under a wave of brown bodies and lashing hairless tails.
“I can’t bear this!” Yellowfang exclaimed. “We can’t just stand here and do nothing!”
Sagewhisker slid out from under the bush and rested a paw on her shoulder. “We have to protect ourselves,” she meowed.
Yellowfang stared at her. “There’s no point if we have to watch all our Clanmates die!”
Shaking off Sagewhisker’s restraining paw, Yellowfang rushed up to the fence and flung herself over it. Just below her a huge rat was attacking Deerleap; Yellowfang leaped straight down on top of it and killed it with a single blow to its neck.