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“You don’t give me the chance to forget,” Brambleclaw retorted, though he couldn’t keep the laughter out of his voice. How long had it been, he asked himself, since any of them had had the time or the strength to play?
He gathered the others together—Mistyfoot watched him give the order without saying anything, the expression in her blue eyes impossible to read—and they set off once more, taking a slanting route down to the lake. As he looked back towards the temporary camp, Brambleclaw saw that the spur of land he had spotted earlier was actually an island; three tiny, fuzzy shapes were standing on the shore looking out at it.
“There’s Leafpaw!” Squirrelflight meowed.
Brambleclaw didn’t ask how she could recognise her sister from so far away; he knew there was some sort of special connection between them, so that each of them always had a good idea where the other one was and how she was feeling. A flicker of jealousy stirred within him, but he pushed it away.
They headed down from the ridge towards a point on the lakeshore further along from the island. To Brambleclaw’s relief, the marshy places and small reed-fringed pools thinned out; instead the ground was covered with long grass that felt cool and comfortable under his pads.
“This is more like it!” muttered Crowfeather. WindClan cats were the least used to wet ground, coming from the well-drained sandy moorland above the woods where the other Clans had lived.
Sunhigh came and went as the five cats travelled along the edge of the lake. A stretch of smooth round pebbles ran down to the water, reminding Brambleclaw of the banks of the river in the forest. A little way from the shore, he spotted the spreading ripples where a fish had just risen.
“Plenty of prey for RiverClan,” he pointed out to Mistyfoot.
She nodded. “Mind you,” she meowed, “we might need to work out new ways of fishing. We’re used to standing on the bank or on stepping stones and scooping them out with our paws. What would we do if all the fish went to hide in the middle of the lake?”
There was an amused snort from Squirrelflight, but Brambleclaw silenced her with a glare. Mistyfoot hadn’t been joking—her Clan could starve next to a lake full of prey if they didn’t have the right hunting techniques. He narrowed his eyes and stared across the lake to the greenish smudge that might be the sort of trees ThunderClan had lived among before. Surely hunting mice and squirrels would be the same here as it had been in the forest?
The pebbles beneath their paws grew larger and more slippery, and they slowed down to pick their way carefully, without getting their feet trapped between the stones. The lake bulged into the land ahead of them, and Brambleclaw stopped to look at the opposite shore. Pine trees surrounded a grassy area at the edge of the water, where a wooden structure stuck out into the lake. It looked a bit like the Twoleg bridge in the old territory, but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
“What’s that?” Brambleclaw asked, signaling with his tail.
“Some Twoleg thing.” Crowfeather was disdainful.
“I hope that doesn’t mean Twolegs swarming all over the place,” meowed Tawnypelt.
“I don’t think so,” Mistyfoot replied. “I can’t see any Twolegs there now. Maybe they come only in greenleaf, like they used to in our old territory. Their kits like to play in the water.”
“I always thought Twolegs were mousebrained.” Crowfeather sniffed.
Squirrelflight was staring across at the bridge thing, her jaws parted to drink in any scent carried on the breeze. “I can’t smell anything but forest scents and prey,” she reported at last.
“We’re too far away to pick up all the scent trails,” Brambleclaw meowed. “We’ll check it out when we get over there. Like Mistyfoot said, there aren’t any Twolegs around now.”
He signaled for the patrol to move on again. They walked in silence, as if the Twoleg half-bridge had reminded them of their old enemies, and made them warier. Before long Brambleclaw heard another sound above the gentle lapping of waves on the shore: the gurgle of running water. The ground underpaw grew wetter, and just ahead he could see a thick line of reeds winding away from the lake.
“A stream!” Mistyfoot exclaimed, bounding forward.
The rest of the patrol picked up their pace until they joined her on the bank. Pushing through the reeds, Brambleclaw saw that the stream flowed out of the lake; it was wider than the streams they had crossed previously, too broad to jump across, with deep channels curving around pebbly shallows and small, stony islands. The water looked green and cool, shaded by reeds and the occasional tree that grew along the banks. Clumps of brown, dry bracken all around promised more lush vegetation in greenleaf.
Mistyfoot looked around, the tip of her tail twitching. “RiverClan would like a place like this.”
Brambleclaw noticed that she did not make an instant claim to this territory on behalf of her Clan, but he saw the longing in her eyes as she surveyed the stream. He agreed it would be a good place for RiverClan, but it wasn’t their decision to make. Their duty was to report back to the rest of the cats when they had explored all the land around the lake, and the leaders would decide how to divide it up.
“Hey!” Squirrelflight mewed. “I just saw a fish!”
A heartbeat later Brambleclaw spotted one, too, a silver flash that sent ripples spiralling out as it touched the surface of the water.
“Perfect!” mewed Mistyfoot. “Shall I catch some for us?”
“We know how to catch our own, you know.” Tawnypelt spoke politely, but with an edge to her voice.
Mistyfoot gave her a curious look. “Where did you learn that?”
“On our journey,” Crowfeather meowed abruptly. “Feathertail taught us.” He turned away and stalked a few paces downstream, where he sat close to the water, staring into the depths with one paw raised, ready to strike.
Brambleclaw’s heart ached for him. None of them would ever forget the brave and gentle RiverClan cat who had done so much to help Crowfeather feel at ease in the group, and in the end had given her life to save him from Sharptooth. Brambleclaw wondered whether Crowfeather’s pain would ever be healed. Sometimes he seemed as prickly and self-contained as he had been at the start of their journey, before he had learned to trust his companions, and before he had fallen in love with Feathertail.
Mistyfoot gave a sympathetic murmur; Brambleclaw saw grief in her eyes too, and remembered that she had been Feathertail’s mentor. But the RiverClan deputy didn’t attempt to go over to the WindClan warrior and comfort him. Perhaps she knew he wouldn’t welcome any cat intruding on his sad memories. Instead she crouched down where she was to wait for a fish. Tawnypelt and Squirrelflight joined her, but Brambleclaw stayed close to the reeds, all his senses alert for danger. They still didn’t know what this new territory might conceal, and four cats intent on hunting would make easy prey for a hungry fox.
There was no scent of predators or Twolegs, and by the time his friends had hooked several fish out of the stream there had been no sound to disturb them.
“Aren’t you hungry, Brambleclaw?” Squirrelflight asked, padding up to him and setting down the plump silver fish she carried in her jaws. “Or have you forgotten how to fish?”
“I was keeping watch,” he protested. He broke off when he spotted the gleam in her green eyes.
“Mousebrain,” she purred, patting the fish towards him with one forepaw. “I know exactly what you were doing, and I caught enough for both of us. Come and share.”
Tawnypelt shot Brambleclaw a look from narrowed eyes as he sat down beside Squirrelflight. “You seem pretty close,” she remarked quietly. “No need to ask StarClan what your future holds!”
Brambleclaw squirmed in embarrassment, uncomfortable at the thought of other cats gossiping about who he chose to spend time with. Then he relaxed. He had no reason to be secretive about his feelings for Squirrelflight, especially with his own sister. “Then that makes one less thing for StarClan to worry about,” he retorted lightly.
When the meal was over, he stood up, swiping his tongue around his jaws. “Where now?” he asked. “Back to the lake, or shall we have a look downstream?”
“I’d like to explore downstream,” meowed Mistyfoot. “We could see if there are any good places for a camp.”
Brambleclaw nodded, and the cats padded in single file along the bank of the stream, away from the lake. Brambleclaw let Mistyfoot take the lead, because she had the best idea of what she’d be looking out for to make a good RiverClan camp. As far as he could see, there were plenty of places where her Clanmates would feel at home: reed beds, clumps of bramble thickets for fresh-kill that wasn’t fish, with the gurgling of the stream always in their ears. Before very long, they came to a small trickle of water that fell down a slope thickly covered with fern and moss to join the main stream. The land between the two streams was sheltered by clumps of hazel and brambles.
“That’s perfect!” Mistyfoot’s eyes shone; she crossed the main stream, leaping from one pebbly island to the next, then paused as if she had almost forgotten that they needed to watch out for danger. She lifted her head to taste the air before vanishing into the undergrowth.
“It looks as if RiverClan are settled,” Tawnypelt commented.
“Nothing is settled,” Crowfeather reminded her sharply. “It’s for the leaders to decide how the territories are divided up.”
“Well, don’t tell me WindClan want to live by a stream, because I won’t believe you,” Squirrelflight retorted.
“Crowfeather’s right, but there’s no need to argue.” Brambleclaw tried to sound neutral, but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. This place was perfect for RiverClan, but it would suit ThunderClan very well, too. OK, so they had never hunted for fish back in the forest, but they could learn, and there were enough trees growing here to provide them with fur-clad prey as well. Brambleclaw wasn’t going to say anything now because it might upset Mistyfoot, but no final decisions could be made before they had seen everything. “With any luck, we’ll find somewhere right for all of us,” he meowed firmly.
Mistyfoot soon came back, her tail in the air and her eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “I’ve seen enough for now,” she mewed. “We could definitely make a camp here. Let’s keep going, and see if we can find somewhere for your Clans, too.”
Trying not to feel irritated by the trace of smugness in her tone, as if she was doing them a big favour by accompanying them when RiverClan seemed to have found their perfect home, Brambleclaw led the way to join her on the other side of the main stream. They headed back towards the lake, past the place where they had stopped to fish, and emerged from the trees into an open space stretching down to the shore. Not far ahead was the Twoleg half-bridge, and now that they were closer, Brambleclaw caught a faint but familiar tang in the air.
“There’s a Thunderpath nearby!” he hissed. The hair on his shoulders lifted and his blood turned to ice as he remembered the Twoleg monsters gouging through the forest, ripping the trees out of the ground and leaving an unrecognisable landscape of mud and ruts. Would Twolegs and their monsters drive them away from this place too?
Beside him, Squirrelflight stood with her paws braced against the ground and her fur fluffed up, as if she too was watching their home being destroyed all over again.
“I haven’t heard any monsters,” Mistyfoot meowed calmly. “Let’s go and look.”
She took a pace forward, glancing back when she realised that none of the others had followed her. “Look,” she went on, “we lived near the old Thunderpaths for seasons and seasons, and they never did any cat any harm, so long as we were careful. This one is quieter already—we haven’t heard a single monster today. There’s no need to lose your fur over it. Now come on.”
Brambleclaw gave himself a shake. He felt a bit cross that he had frozen at the first hint of danger, leaving Mistyfoot to take charge of the patrol. He padded forward warily with the others bunched around him. The scent of the Thunderpath strengthened and soon he spotted the hard, black surface, winding through the grass like a flattened snake. It was much narrower than the old Thunderpath, and as Mistyfoot had pointed out there were no monsters charging back and forth on it.
“What’s it for?” Crowfeather wondered, walking right up to the edge. “Look—it just goes down to the lake and stops.”
Brambleclaw realised he was right. The Thunderpath ended beside the lake in a wide area covered with the same hard, black stuff. At one side was a small Twoleg nest made of wood.
“The Twoleg scent is faint and stale,” Tawnypelt remarked. “I’d guess they haven’t been here for moons.”
“Look what I’ve found!”
Brambleclaw spun around and froze when he saw that Squirrelflight had ventured right out onto the half-bridge, and was gazing down into the water.
“Be careful!” he called, bounding over to her. His paws made a soft thudding sound on the planks of wood, and every few paces one of them rattled ominously. He tried not to think what it would feel like to plunge through into the icy grey water.
“Look!” Squirrelflight leaned over the edge and pricked her ears.
Following where she pointed, Brambleclaw saw another Twoleg object floating on the water. It looked like an upturned leaf, but it was much bigger and was made of wood. It was partly hidden by the half-bridge, so they hadn’t seen it from the shore.
“What is it?”
“Twolegs call it a boat,” Mistyfoot told them, padding up. Her fur lay flat on her shoulders, and she obviously wasn’t bothered by the rattling half-bridge. “They used to bring them onto our river sometimes—did you never see one? Sometimes they used them for fishing.”
Brambleclaw tried to picture a Twoleg crouching in this boat, waiting to hook out a fish with its big clumsy paws. He found it hard to believe they’d be quick enough to catch anything, but if Mistyfoot said so, it must be true.
“I think this must be a place where the Twolegs come in greenleaf, like the river,” Mistyfoot went on. “That means we don’t have to worry about them now.”
“We’ll need to worry in greenleaf, though,” Squirrelflight meowed.
Mistyfoot shrugged. “We’ll think about that when the time comes. There’ll be thicker growth everywhere by then. We can keep out of the Twolegs’ way, just as we did before.” She lifted her head to look squarely at Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight, and her gaze took in Crowfeather and Tawnypelt, who were waiting anxiously where the half-bridge joined with the shore. “Of course there will be dangers in our new home, wherever we end up,” she meowed, “but we mustn’t forget that we had enemies back in the forest, even before the Twolegs brought their monsters. If StarClan brought us here, it was not because there were no dangers here at all, but because we could learn to live among them, just as we did before.”
Squirrelflight nodded, chastened, but Brambleclaw curled his lip. He didn’t like the way Mistyfoot was treating them all like anxious apprentices. She had no idea of the dangers they had faced on the first journey to sun-drown-place! More Thunderpaths than she had crossed in her entire life, as well as dogs, hostile kittypets, Twolegs who wanted to trap them, hungry foxes . . .
“Are you going to stay here forever?” Squirrelflight had padded past him and was looking over her shoulder with her tail raised questioningly. Mistyfoot was already back on the shore with the others.
“No, I’m coming,” Brambleclaw muttered. He followed Squirrelflight off the half-bridge and tried not to feel mutinous when Mistyfoot led the way out of the clearing, away from the Thunderpath.
“She’s the deputy of her Clan,” Squirrelflight murmured, dropping back to walk close beside him. “You can’t blame her for having more experience than us.”
Brambleclaw was about to reply fiercely that their journey to sun-drown-place made them more experienced than any other forest cat when he saw that Squirrelflight was looking at him with sympathy in her green eyes. It wasn’t fair to take out his temper on her. If he was honest with himself, he was mostly feeling embarrassed because he had frozen with fear at the sight of the Thunderpath, afraid that what had driven them out of the forest was going to happen all over again.
He stretched his head forward to lick Squirrelflight’s ear. “I know,” he meowed. “And everything she says is true. Come on, let’s not get left behind.”
They broke into a run, and Brambleclaw felt a jolt of relief as they left the Twolegplace and the half-bridge behind and headed into the next part of the territory.
They were approaching the dark green smudge that he had seen across the lake from their temporary camp. As he had guessed, it was a pinewood, like the part of the forest in ThunderClan’s old territory that had surrounded Treecutplace. He sniffed the air, but there was no sign of the bitter stench left by tree-cutting monsters, and the ground was smooth and flat, unscarred by the ruts that monsters left behind.
The sun had started to go down, and a red light shone through the trees, casting dark shadows across their path. Tawnypelt’s tortoiseshell fur smouldered as the light glanced across her shoulders, and her eyes gleamed.
Brambleclaw realised that it wasn’t just the woods around Treecutplace that were like this; ShadowClan’s old territory had also had lots of pine trees, giving way to sticky, marshy ground where only a few stunted trees grew.
“Do you think ShadowClan would like to settle here?” he asked his sister.
“Maybe.” Tawnypelt’s tail twitched. “But back in the forest there were more trees with lower branches. We’d have trouble climbing most of these.”
Brambleclaw saw that she was right. The pines around them grew straight up, with smooth, slippery trunks, and the lowest branches began well above a cat’s head. An energetic warrior could claw his way up the trunk, but elders or queens and their kits would have trouble. If foxes or badgers attacked, the weakest cats in the Clan would find it hard to escape.
“But you won’t camp in the trees,” Crowfeather meowed. “If you make this your territory, you’ll need somewhere easy to defend for your camp.”
Tawnypelt nodded and looked around. The old ShadowClan camp had been in the shelter of a clump of bramble bushes, dense enough to keep the cats hidden and prickly enough to discourage even the most curious foxes. “I can’t see anywhere here,” she commented.
The ground sloped gently upwards from the lake, which was just visible through the trees as a glimmer of silver. As far as Brambleclaw could see the forest floor was smooth and clear, with little undergrowth where prey might be found. When he tasted the air, the strongest scent except for their own was squirrel—but a Clan could not survive by waiting for squirrels to come down from the trees.
A pang of sympathy for his sister tore through him like a claw. In the forest they had left, ShadowClan’s territory had been dreary and unwelcoming: partly bog, partly scrubby forest with few tall trees. He had always wondered if the darkness in the hearts of some of the ShadowClan cats came from their gloomy surroundings. This wasn’t quite as forbidding, but it still wasn’t right for cats.
“It might be different further on,” he mewed encouragingly. “Let’s head away from the lake.”
Tawnypelt took the lead as they moved warily up the slope. The thick covering of brittle pine needles muffled their pawsteps; everything was so quiet that their meows sounded too loud, and gradually every cat fell silent. Brambleclaw nearly jumped out of his fur when a bird shot up with a loud alarm call.
Squirrelflight sniffed at a clump of yellowish fungi and drew back with her lip curled in disgust. “I wouldn’t want to live here,” she muttered to Brambleclaw. “Do you think there’s any point in going further?”
“It’s up to Tawnypelt,” he replied. “This is more like ShadowClan territory than anything we’ve seen so far.”
They padded on, but before they had gone many more pawsteps Mistyfoot stopped. “This is no good,” she meowed. “We’re getting further and further away from the lake, and it’s going to get dark soon.”
“I need to find somewhere for a ShadowClan camp,” Tawnypelt insisted stubbornly.
“But the Clans sent us to patrol the whole lake.” Mistyfoot’s tail twitched. “We can’t waste time exploring one place more than anywhere else. You’ve already said that these trees remind you of your old home, so maybe this should be ShadowClan territory.”
“And what do you think I’m going to say to Blackstar about where we’ll actually live?” Tawnypelt’s voice had grown sharper, and her neck fur began to rise. “You needn’t think ShadowClan are going to take the worst territory. If there’s nowhere to camp, then forget it!”
Mistyfoot’s neck fur bristled too. “Trust ShadowClan to be difficult!”
“It’s all right for you, isn’t it? RiverClan’s got everything sorted out. You were pretty quick to stake a claim when we found that stream!”
Mistyfoot let out a furious hiss, unsheathing her claws, and Brambleclaw quickly stepped forward to push himself between the quarrelling she-cats. Much as he sympathised with Tawnypelt, it would be a disaster if she got into a fight with the RiverClan deputy. There was no way they could deal with injuries out here, with no medicine cats and no healing herbs; and how would they ever finish their mission if they were quarrelling among themselves?
“Stop! Tawnypelt, no cat will force ShadowClan to settle in a place they don’t want.”
“Huh!” Tawnypelt shot a last glare at Mistyfoot before turning away.
“I think we should go on a bit further,” Brambleclaw mewed to Mistyfoot. “We need to find somewhere to spend the night.”
“I know.” Mistyfoot still sounded out of temper. “I just think we should head back to the lake.”
“But—” Brambleclaw broke off. A faint breeze had sprung up, bringing with it an unexpected scent. He tasted the air, just to be sure. “More cats!” he exclaimed.
“What?” Squirrelflight bounded over. “Where?”
