The Apprentice's Quest (18 page)

Sandstorm sat down with a grunt of annoyance. “If you must.”

Alderpaw's belly lurched as he scraped away the comfrey root poultice from Sandstorm's injured shoulder. The wound was slightly red and swollen, and when he laid his paw gently on it, he could feel heat rising from it.

“This could be the beginning of an infection,” he told Sandstorm, trying not to let his voice shake. “You really shouldn't be traveling until it's healed. Or at the very least,” he added, as Sandstorm opened her jaws to protest, “you should rest a bit more while I go and look for some horsetail or marigold to treat the infection. Honey would help, too.”

“You sure have learned a lot,” Sandstorm meowed, her approving gaze showing how impressed she was. “But we can't hang around here while you go looking for horsetail. If we pass some on the way, then you can gather some.”

“But—” Alderpaw began.

“Until then, you have to trust me,” Sandstorm interrupted.
“I'm
fine
. You may be a medicine cat, but I've been around a long time. I've had a lot of wounds in my day, and this one isn't so bad.” Briefly she touched Alderpaw's shoulder with her tail-tip. “It's certainly not worth turning aside from our quest, especially after that terrible vision you just had.”

Once again Alderpaw struggled to protest. “But your wound—”

“You have to trust me,” Sandstorm repeated. “This is your quest, but I am your elder.”

Although he still was uneasy, Alderpaw didn't feel that he could argue with Sandstorm anymore. He dipped his head in acceptance; then Sandstorm rose, and the two cats began to walk back toward their Clanmates, side by side.

But before they reached them, Alderpaw spotted sleek silver fur in the midst of a clump of long grass. He realized that Needlepaw was crouched only a couple of tail-lengths away from where he and Sandstorm had been talking. Her gaze locked with Alderpaw's, but he couldn't interpret her expression.

How much did she overhear?

The cats trekked on through the
woods as the sun sank lower in the sky. Sandstorm had taken the lead again, with Alderpaw just behind her, Needlepaw stalking along a little way away from the others, and the rest of the ThunderClan cats bringing up the rear.

Alderpaw still felt tired, and he guessed the others did too. Their paws were dragging, and although no cat was talking much, he picked up occasional snatches of complaints from the cats behind him.

“I don't see why we had to leave so quickly,” Molewhisker grumbled. “What's the rush?”

“Yeah, we could have stayed the night there,” Sparkpaw added.

Glancing back, Alderpaw wished he could tell them the truth. “I just wanted to get going,” he explained.

Sparkpaw snorted but made no reply in words.

Before long the trees thinned out, and Alderpaw could see open country ahead. In the distance he spotted a huge Twoleg structure built of some kind of yellow stone.
I wonder what that is.

As they set out across the open ground, Needlepaw came
sidling over to Alderpaw until she was padding close by his side. Alderpaw felt uncomfortable having a cat from another Clan so close to him, even though she seemed to be losing her harsh ShadowClan scent.

“You know when you were talking to Sandstorm back there?” she murmured, leaning close to speak into Alderpaw's ear. “Well, I overheard
everything
!”

Alderpaw started, and his neck fur bristled with anxiety and dismay.
Oh, no! Now she knows the
real
reason we're on this quest. After Bramblestar told me no other cats should know. And she isn't even a ThunderClan cat.
Then, as he met Needlepaw's green gaze, he realized that she didn't look altogether confident. Could she be bluffing?
Well, two can play at that game.

“Oh, really?” he responded, trying to keep his voice casual and forcing his neck fur to lie flat. “Well, it can't have done you much good, unless you want to know more about comfrey root.”

“Comfrey root!” Needlepaw let out a
mrrow
of laughter. “Oh yes, and the rest!”

“What ‘rest'?” Alderpaw asked. “It's not like we were discussing anything important.”

Needlepaw cast a quick glance around to make sure they were out of earshot of the other cats. “It wouldn't have been anything about your
vision
, would it?”

“What are you meowing about?” Alderpaw was getting flustered, wondering how much Needlepaw had worked out for herself, and how much she could only have learned if she had heard the whole of his conversation with Sandstorm. “If
you must know, we were talking about cats who might need our help.”

“How noble of you,” Needlepaw purred. “Which cats would they be?”

“Well . . . any cats. I'm a medicine cat. Helping is what I do.”

“Hmm . . .” Needlepaw twitched her whiskers thoughtfully. “Cats who need help . . . and your vision . . . and this quest for what will clear the sky. It's all starting to add up, isn't it?”

Alderpaw felt cold from his ears to his tail-tip. Guiltily he realized that if Needlepaw was only pretending to have overheard, he had given away more than he should have.

However much she knows,
he thought with a shiver,
it's enough to cause a problem. And that gives her power. She'll have to stay with us now, whether we want her or not.

“Hey, look at that.” Cherryfall's mew cut into Alderpaw's thoughts. He looked up ahead and saw that the group was now very close to the big yellow Twoleg den he had seen in the distance.

“Let's go explore it!” Sparkpaw suggested with a bounce of excitement.

Molewhisker shook his head. “It's a Twoleg thing, and it's better to stay away from Twolegs.”

“I'm guessing that it's a barn like the one at the horseplace,” Sandstorm told them. “This must be a farm—look, you can see more Twoleg dens just beyond it. My advice would be to keep well away from it.”

Alderpaw agreed, but before the cats had gone much
farther, their path was blocked by a tall fence. It was made of interlinked tendrils of some hard, shiny stuff, topped by fearsome-looking spikes.

“
Now
what do we do?” Cherryfall asked, dismayed.

The fence stretched into the distance on either side; Alderpaw realized it would take far too long to go around it. While he was hesitating, Sparkpaw stepped forward and sniffed at the bottom of the fence.

“Maybe we could try going under it,” she suggested.

“What are we, rabbits?” Needlepaw muttered, while Sparkpaw scraped experimentally at the earth where the fence disappeared into the grass.

“No,” she reported, with a discouraged shake of her head. “It seems to go a long way down into the ground.”

“Then maybe there's a hole that we can fit through,” Molewhisker mewed.

Alderpaw led the way along the fence for a few fox-lengths, but everywhere it was strong and intact. Only a mouse could have slipped through the gaps between the tendrils.

“There's only one thing to do,” Needlepaw announced at last. “We'll have to go over it.”

“You've grown wings, have you?” Sparkpaw muttered sarcastically.

Needlepaw ignored her. “I'll go first,” she meowed. “It doesn't look that hard. Watch.”

Every cat watched nervously as she began to climb, fitting her paws into the narrow spaces between the shiny tendrils. The fence bobbed and swayed alarmingly, but Needlepaw
kept going until she reached the very top, her paws balancing between the spikes.

“Be careful!” Sandstorm called out.

For a moment Alderpaw was certain that Needlepaw would impale herself on the sharp spikes. But then, bunching and stretching her muscles, she flung herself off the top of the bobbing fence and landed neatly on the other side.

“Easy!” she called out, giving her shoulder a smug lick.

“If she can do it, so can I,” Sparkpaw mewed, swarming up the fence the same way Needlepaw had, then leaping gracefully down on the far side.

Cherryfall went next, more slowly but without mishap, and Molewhisker followed her.

“Your turn now, Alderpaw,” Sandstorm told him. “I'll go last.”

Alderpaw's belly squirmed as he approached the fence. He tried not to think of the spikes tearing into him, or of looking a fool in front of his Clanmates—and Needlepaw.

To begin with he climbed slowly, but he made himself think of the cats in his vision, crying out in anguish and far more terrified than he was now.
I have to do this. They need me.

More determined, he managed to pick up the pace, and he found it wasn't as hard as it looked to haul himself upward with his paws slotting into the narrow gaps. The only really frightening moment was when he clung to the top of the swaying fence. For a moment his belly felt queasy; then he launched himself into the air and thumped down beside his sister.

I did it!

Sandstorm had already begun to climb. She made it quickly to the top, but clinging between the spikes, she hesitated. Her paws slipped, and she fell, crashing down to the ground and rolling over.

“Sandstorm!” Molewhisker's yowl was full of panic as he lurched forward, dropping to his belly to stop her momentum.

The older cat fell against him and then lay still, panting. Alderpaw rushed over to her, with his other Clanmates hard on his paws. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.

Sandstorm sat up. “I'm fine,” she rasped, as if for a moment she had trouble breathing. “I just felt like being a bird.”

“Well, don't try it again,” Alderpaw responded.

Sandstorm rested for a little while, and then the cats set out again, still heading for the big Twoleg den. Walking beside Sandstorm, Alderpaw noticed that her wound looked bigger, and drops of blood were oozing out of it.

“Did you catch your shoulder on one of the spikes?” he asked her.

Sandstorm shrugged. “I might have scraped it. Don't fuss, Alderpaw; it's fine. If you want to worry,” she added, “you might worry about that enormous beast up ahead!”

Alderpaw had been so concerned about Sandstorm that he hadn't noticed what lay in front of them. Now he looked up to see that the other cats had stopped and were uneasily eyeing a huge creature that stood a few fox-lengths away. Even Needlepaw looked scared.

It was smaller than the horses Alderpaw had seen as they left Clan territory, but still big enough to be frightening. Its
lumpy body was covered in black-and-white fur; its legs were spindly with hard, sharp paws. Its tail, ending in a tuft of hair, swung to and fro. Enormous eyes in a square face gazed expressionlessly at the cats.

“What is it?” Sparkpaw gasped.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Sandstorm mewed calmly. “I've seen them before, and they're not unfriendly. Mostly they just ignore cats.”

“Mostly?” Alderpaw asked nervously.

“They're okay unless something scares them into running. Then they're big enough to trample us underpaw. So we need to be careful not to scare this one.”

“You've no idea how good that makes me feel,” Molewhisker muttered.

Alderpaw forced his paws into motion, heading in a wide circle around the strange animal, never taking his eyes off it. His friends followed him. The creature swung its head around to track their progress, still gazing at them with those large, incurious eyes. Then without warning it opened its jaws and let out a deep-throated bellow.

Thoroughly spooked, Alderpaw gave a yowl of terror and raced for the big Twoleg den. He could hear caterwauling from behind him as the others pelted after him.

Have we scared it? Will it run?

But when he halted and looked back, panting, the huge animal hadn't stirred. It just stood there, still staring at them. Its jaws moved rhythmically as it chewed.

“Great StarClan!” Cherryfall exclaimed. “What
is
that?”

After a moment Sandstorm let out a
mrrow
of laughter, and the others joined in, beginning to relax. Alderpaw suddenly felt ashamed of his nervousness, and he could see from his friends' faces that they felt the same.

“Let's move on,” he meowed.

Skirting the big yellow den and the cluster of smaller dens, the cats headed away at a brisk lope. Alderpaw hoped they were leaving the Twoleg stuff behind them, until he spotted a smaller wooden den, with birds pecking at the earth around it and straying into the cats' path.

“What are those?” he asked curiously.

The birds were bigger than pigeons, with reddish-brown feathers and scaly yellow legs. They didn't pay much attention as the cats approached.

“They're birds, mouse-brain,” Sparkpaw replied to Alderpaw. “And that means they're prey.”

Crouching down, she began to creep up on the nearest bird. But there was no cover, and the bird spotted her as she pounced. It spun around to face her, flapping its wings and letting out a series of harsh squawks.

The rest of the birds scattered, running across the grass as if they didn't know how to fly. But the bird Sparkpaw had tried to hunt stretched its neck out and attacked her with furious pecks. Sparkpaw leaped backward, hissing defiantly.

“It looks like you're the prey,” Needlepaw meowed, her voice full of laughter and her eyes gleaming.

“Leave them,” Sandstorm ordered, gesturing with her tail for Sparkpaw to rejoin the group. “It's not worth risking
injury. We'll hunt when we get past this place.”

“Yes, we need to keep going,” Alderpaw added, urgency pricking his paws as he remembered the desperate cries of the SkyClan cats.

Looking sulky, Sparkpaw obeyed. She glared at Needlepaw as the ShadowClan cat let out a stream of squawks in imitation of the weird birds. “Stop messing around, you crazy furball,” she muttered.

But Needlepaw seemed not to understand the need to move on quickly. Alderpaw's irritation with her rose as she poked her nose into every hole and clump of long grass. She halted at the sight of another strange creature, smaller than the first, but with the same hard, pointed paws. It had curving horns and a long wisp of hair dangling from its chin. Alderpaw shivered at the sight of its eerie eyes.