Path Оf А Warrior

Chapter One

A fresh breeze carried the smell of rabbit, and Tawnypelt’s mouth watered. She tasted the air thoughtfully, following the tantalizing scent.

There. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there from the scent and from tiny sounds: the slight crackle of bracken, the rabbit’s hurried breathing, the pounding of its heart. The prey was huddled in a clump of bracken near the base of a big pine tree. The sweet scent of pine resin, so dear to Tawnypelt, filled her nostrils.

It’s good to be home, she thought. It feels like I’ve been gone for moons!

She crouched, fixing her eyes on the rabbit’s hiding place, and began to slink closer, her paw steps silent. She knew the forest floor like the back of her paws; she knew where to step to keep her approach silent. She was quite close to the rabbit when a loud crack sounded from the bracken: Her prey must have scented her. It bolted out of the undergrowth, but she could easily predict where it would go. She pounced. One strong bite to its neck, and the rabbit fell, limp beneath her.

Tawnypelt picked up her prey, satisfied. This would make a fine meal for her Clanmates.

The sun was climbing into the sky as she slid through the thorn tunnel and past the boulder into camp, the rabbit dangling from her jaws.

“Tawnypelt!” Dawnpelt was washing herself outside the warriors’ den. Tawnypelt’s heart warmed at the sight of her. Oh, Dawnpelt, where have you been? It felt like ages since she had seen her kit. “Nice catch!”

“Oh, good, I’m starving,” Pinenose said cheerfully, getting to her feet. Her sides were rounded and she moved heavily. Her kits, Tawnypelt thought. Has she really not had them yet? It’s been a long time. It feels like …

The thought hit her suddenly: Something’s wrong. Tawnypelt dropped the rabbit in the fresh-kill pile and stared, puzzled, at her Clanmates and at the peaceful camp. Dawnpelt shouldn’t be here. And Pinenose … Tawnypelt remembered those kits being born. There’d been four, hadn’t there? They’d taken a long time coming, and Pinenose had borne the pain bravely.

But now that pain was still in the future. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t real.

Tawnypelt shivered as if she’d fallen into the lake in winter. This felt so familiar, so right, but this wasn’t ShadowClan … not anymore. Dawnpelt and Pinenose were dead. So many of her Clanmates were dead.

“It was a good hunt, then?” The voice came from behind her.

“Rowanstar!” Joy flooded through her as she turned to face her mate. He blinked his amber eyes affectionately and she stepped closer, brushing her cheek against his, breathing in his familiar scent. It felt as if it had been longer than one morning since she had seen him.

Much longer. Wait, she realized again. Something’s wrong.

She flinched, and Rowanstar’s tail twitched in concern. “What’s the matter?”

“This isn’t ShadowClan.” The words tumbled out of Tawnypelt’s mouth. She grew surer as she went on, remembering. “I mean, it is, but it’s not real ShadowClan, not as it is now. This is before the sickness, and before Darktail came… .” Her voice trailed off as Rowanstar stared at her, puzzled.

“You must have had a complicated dream last night,” he purred at last. “I told you that vole didn’t look right.”

“Are you sure?” Tawnypelt turned slowly, staring around the camp. She desperately wanted to believe him. Crowfrost, ShadowClan’s deputy, had joined Dawnpelt outside the warriors’ den. Pinenose was sharing the fat rabbit Tawnypelt had caught with Kinkfur, the crotchety elder. She could hear kits squealing happily in the nursery.

Please let this be real!

A sense of peace lay over the whole of ShadowClan’s camp. As she watched her Clanmates, Tawnypelt relaxed for the first time in a long time. She let her side press against Rowanstar’s, shoulder to shoulder with him. “This is real?” she asked hopefully.

Rowanstar’s tail brushed across her back, reassuring. “This is the only real ShadowClan.”

Tawnypelt purred. “I’m so—”

“Pouncekit! Pouncekit, wait for me!” A yowl rang across the camp. Tawnypelt opened her eyes and stared at the brambles of the warriors’ den, her heart sinking. A dream. I was right. It wasn’t real. Rowanstar was dead. So many of her Clanmates and kin were dead.

“That’s not how you play, Shadowkit!” Lightkit’s yowl grated across Tawnypelt’s nerves, shaking away the last of her dream. The light in the den was the pale pinkish glow of early dawn, but she knew she wasn’t going to fall back asleep. Climbing from her nest, she headed out of the warriors’ den. As she stepped outside, the cold of early leaf-bare sliced through her fur, and she shivered.

“Get off me, Lightkit!” Pouncekit screeched.

“Oh, that’s enough!” Juniperclaw, his black fur tousled from sleep, brushed past Tawnypelt and stormed to the center of the clearing. “You kits need to settle down right now,” he growled furiously. “You’re waking up the whole camp!”

The three kits froze, staring up at him with identical wide amber eyes, so like Rowanstar’s that Tawnypelt’s heart gave a strange little throb. No, not Rowanstar. Rowanclaw. Rowanstar had given up his status as ShadowClan’s leader and become Rowanclaw again before he died. Her dream had left her confused.

“Sorry, Juniperclaw,” Dovewing mewed easily from the entrance to the nursery. “But they’re only kits.”

Juniperclaw’s thin black tail whipped back and forth angrily as he stared at Dovewing. “Maybe that’s how kits act in ThunderClan,” he snarled. “But here we expect them to have some consideration for their Clanmates.”

Dovewing looked taken aback, but before she could say anything, Tawnypelt’s son, Tigerheart—no, Tigerstar, he’s leader now; what is wrong with me today?—stepped out of the leader’s den. “Kits, you need to be quieter,” he said sternly. “And Juniperclaw, you’ve got no right to talk to Dovewing that way. She’s as much a ShadowClan cat as you are.”

Juniperclaw dipped his head in acknowledgment, but his green eyes were stormy with resentment. “Whatever you say, Tigerstar,” he muttered.

As Juniperclaw headed back toward the warriors’ den, Tawnypelt tried to give him a sympathetic look, but the tom avoided her gaze. We’re all kin, she thought sadly, but it doesn’t feel like it these days. Juniperclaw was one of Dawnpelt’s kits. Maybe things would be different if Dawnpelt were still alive. Fairly or not, it felt like Juniperclaw still blamed Rowanclaw, and even Tawnypelt herself, for not doing a better job of holding ShadowClan together when the evil rogue Darktail had moved into their territory. He’d eventually convinced enough ShadowClan warriors to join his “Kin” that ShadowClan was nearly destroyed. For a brief period before Tigerstar became leader and revived the Clan, ShadowClan had ceased to exist altogether, folding into SkyClan.

“Hey, Tawnypelt, want to play with us?” Pouncekit, the gray she-kit, was peering up at her. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Just thinking,” Tawnypelt said gently. The kits were still young enough that their eyes looked huge and round, surrounded by layers of fluff. It felt like it hadn’t been long since Tigerstar and Dawnpelt were that small.

“We’re sorry if we woke you up,” Pouncekit’s brother, Shadowkit, said, and both she-kits nodded earnestly.

“It’s fine,” Tawnypelt told them, feeling a surge of affection. They really were sweet kits.

“Come on,” Lightkit said cheerfully to her littermates. “We’ll be so quiet now, as quiet as when we used to hide from the Twolegs.”

Tawnypelt blinked in surprise as the three kits ran off. Kits that age shouldn’t even know about Twolegs, she thought, and then corrected herself. Of course these three did. They’d been born in a faraway place, surrounded by Twolegs and strange Clanless cats, after Tigerheart and Dovewing had run away together.

She loved them, of course. They were her kin, and they were good kits.

But they were so strange. Not like real ShadowClan cats at all, she thought, and immediately felt guilty. It shouldn’t matter that they had been born among strangers, and it shouldn’t matter that their mother was a ThunderClan cat. They were ShadowClan now, weren’t they?

Sort of.

“Sorry about that.” Tigerstar and Dovewing had come to stand alongside her. Tigerstar brushed his cheek against hers, and she touched noses with Dovewing.

“Would you like to share a vole?” Dovewing asked politely.

Tawnypelt’s dream was still fresh in her mind: the intense focus of the hunt, the exhilaration of the final leap, the satisfaction of feeding her Clan. “I think I’ll go hunting, actually,” she said. “Build up the fresh-kill pile a little.”

Tigerstar’s ears twitched. “I sent a patrol out with Strikestone last night,” he said. “They brought back so much prey, I don’t think we need any cat to hunt again before sundown.”

Tawnypelt’s ears flattened with annoyance. Tigerstar had named her his deputy. She’d never asked for the position. But since he’d chosen her, Tigerstar should let her be deputy. Organizing hunting patrols was the deputy’s job.

She took a slow breath and pricked up her ears again. Tigerstar is a new leader. And I owe him my support. He’ll grow into the role, just like Rowanstar did. But he has to find his own way.

“I’d like you to stay in camp and help strengthen the warriors’ den,” Tigerstar went on.

Tawnypelt sighed. “I think I’d be more use hunting,” she meowed, making sure to keep her voice pleasant. Her paws were itching to get out of camp, to be alone in the pine forest for a while. How desperately she had missed the forest while ShadowClan had been living with SkyClan!

Tigerstar exchanged a glance with Dovewing. “The more cats we have restoring the dens, the sooner ShadowClan’s camp will be back to the way it was,” he said firmly.

Tawnypelt looked around. Two of the new apprentices Tigerstar had brought with him from the strange Twolegplace where his kits had been born—Blazepaw and Antpaw—were sharing tongues outside the warriors’ den. Juniperclaw and Scorchfur were picking over the prey in the fresh-kill pile. Slatefur was sharpening his claws on a tree at the edge of camp.

And there were others, all over camp—cats who had been born outside ShadowClan, cats who had betrayed their Clan and their leader for Darktail, cats who had abandoned their dying Clan out of fear and had only just returned to the lake.

“Okay,” Tawnypelt agreed, but deep inside, despite herself, she was thinking: ShadowClan will never be the way it was.

Tawnypelt sneezed. Dust was settling on her fur and getting into her eyes, making them itch. The sun was high overhead. They’d been at this for a long time, and their task was nowhere close to finished.

Scorchfur shoved a wad of moss into a hole in the side of the den, then hissed with annoyance as it immediately fell out again.

“When you put the moss in, hold it there and wait for Stonewing to weave twigs through it to fix it into place,” Tawnypelt recommended.

Ignoring her, Scorchfur picked up the moss with his teeth and jammed it back into the hole. Irritation pricked up Tawnypelt’s spine.

“Stonewing, bring those twigs over here,” she snapped.

The white tom glanced at her, then away, shifting uneasily from one paw to another. “I’m working on this side,” he said.

Digging her claws into the sandy floor of the den, Tawnypelt tried to keep herself from ripping the two toms’ pelts off. “I told you—” she began.

“How’s it going in here?” Tigerstar stuck his head through the den’s entrance. Peering at the walls, he crouched and came all the way in. “You’ll make quicker progress if you work in pairs,” he suggested. “Stonewing, bring those twigs over here. Scorchfur can hold the moss in place and you can weave the twigs through it. It’ll make for a warmer den.”

Scorchfur and Stonewing looked at each other. “Okay,” Stonewing said, and bent to pick up the twigs at his paws.

Hot rage shot through Tawnypelt, so sudden and violent that it frightened her. “I’m taking a break,” she announced, and hurried out of the den. She didn’t stop until she reached the fresh-kill pile, breathing hard.

It’s fine, she tried to tell herself. They don’t have to listen to me. What matters is that ShadowClan has its territory back, and we’re in our own camp again.

When Rowanstar had decided to give up his role as ShadowClan’s leader, she’d wanted very badly to hold her Clan together. But after the battles with Darktail and his Kin, there had been so few ShadowClan warriors left that Rowanstar had felt they’d had to join SkyClan to survive. He’d stopped being a leader, become Rowanclaw again. And then he’d died, trying to save a Clanmate’s kits. Tawnypelt’s grief had been so overwhelming that Tigerstar’s return, and the return of several Clanmates they’d given up for lost, had seemed like a gift.

But reviving a Clan was hard. Rowanclaw was still dead. Some of the ShadowClan cats still resented him for decisions he’d made when Darktail had invaded their territory. And they resented Tawnypelt for standing by him, for loving him.

Some of those same cats betrayed him by joining Darktail, she thought bitterly. Do I even want them as my Clanmates?

Sighing, Tawnypelt picked up a mouse and sat down outside the nursery to eat. I need to be patient.

“Sweet little kits,” she could hear Dovewing purr from inside the nursery. “If I get mine down to sleep, will you watch them while I grab some prey?”

“Sure,” Berryheart sounded distracted. “Does Hollowkit look like he’s getting a cold?”

“He’s fine; don’t worry,” Dovewing said.

Irritation rose up in Tawnypelt again. Doesn’t she care if a ShadowClan kit is ill?

Dovewing hadn’t lifted a paw to help with the camp rebuilding. Yes, her kits were still in the nursery, but they were almost apprentice age; they didn’t need her with them constantly. Dovewing could help if she wanted to.

But why should she? Dovewing’s a ThunderClan cat, even if she’s living in ShadowClan now.

Tawnypelt had been born in ThunderClan, too, but once she had chosen ShadowClan as an apprentice, she had been a ShadowClan cat through and through. More fierce and loyal, with more to prove, than cats who had always been part of the Clan. She doubted that Dovewing felt the same.

Tawnypelt had tried to like her son’s mate, but sometimes she thought that Dovewing’s presence was just another sign that ShadowClan had fallen apart. What would Rowanclaw have said about Tigerstar taking a ThunderClan cat as his mate?

“Are you all right?” Tigerstar’s voice startled her. He had followed her out of the warriors’ den and was padding cautiously toward her.

“I’m fine.” Tawnypelt took a bite of mouse.

“You’ve seemed irritated since I’ve come back,” Tigerstar said, sitting down beside her. He hesitated, then went on. “I know some of the Clan wanted you to take over as leader. If you were angry that I became leader instead, I would understand.”

Tawnypelt sighed, the frustration draining out of her. Tigerstar was trying so hard. “That’s not it,” she said. “I’m glad you’re leader. You have a better chance of making ShadowClan whole again than I would have. But I feel …” She paused, remembering with a sting how the younger warriors had ignored her suggestions earlier. That never would have happened in the old ShadowClan. She took a deep breath and finished, “I’m just not sure how I fit into our Clan now.”

Tigerstar stared at her in surprise. “You’re very important to our Clan,” he insisted. “You’re my deputy.”

“Not if no one listens to me,” Tawnypelt told him.

The fur began to bristle along Tigerstar’s back. “If any cat thinks they don’t have to listen to you, I’ll make them listen,” he said fiercely.

“Getting angry isn’t going to make them accept me,” Tawnypelt said. “A lot of ShadowClan cats were furious at Rowanclaw, and some of them had reason to be. Maybe I’m too much of a reminder of a time ShadowClan needs to forget.”

Tigerstar flicked his tail dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “If I—”

“Help! Help me!” Tawnypelt’s pelt prickled as Dovewing’s desperate yowl cut through Tigerstar’s words. It came from the nursery behind them.

Tigerstar leaped to his feet and dashed for the den’s entrance, Tawnypelt a few paces behind.

“It’s Shadowkit! Help!” Dovewing cried. Tawnypelt put on a burst of speed and caught up with Tigerstar; they pushed their way through the nursery’s entrance together.

On the floor of the nursery, Shadowkit was shaking, his small limbs flailing as if he was caught in a nightmare. His littermates and Yarrowleaf, Berryheart, and their kits were pressed against the walls of the nursery, staring at him in horror.

Dovewing, crouched beside Shadowkit, looked up, her green eyes desperate. “I can’t get him to wake up.”