Erm…
Breezepelt gave up, and slumped to the ground, panting. Crowfeather looked beside himself with fury, as did Nightcloud.
"Why didn't you help him?" she meowed shrilly to Crowfeather. "Look at our son! He's hurt, and he's got kits to take care of back in WindClan!"
"The kits are apprentices now," Crowfeather meowed indifferently. Echobreeze felt startled as Crowfeather looked her straight in the eye, and it wasn't fury in his eyes anymore, but something else…interest? "They may even be warriors."
"What are you talking about, they just became apprentices!" Nightcloud shrieked.
"He means that his son's kits," Heathertail meowed, emphasizing his son's, "already have the heart of a warrior."
Nightcloud seemed to calm down a little.
Heathertail was looking furiously at Crowfeather, who seemed more interested in his estranged son's daughter than his own son. Echobreeze felt her pelt prickle with discomfort.
"Well," Tawnypelt meowed, clearing her throat and glancing at the lightening sky, "we should decide something, shouldn't we?" Her gaze swept in the kits and Ivyvine. "Obviously, since Ivyvine isn't supposed to be here, she should be the one to take the kits back."
"We're already so far from camp," Ivyvine moaned. "How am I going to take them back myself?"
"How did they get here themselves?" Tawnypelt asked sharply, and Ivyvine's blue eyes flickered.
"If Ivyvine's going back, then I am, too," Dovewing meowed quickly, going to stand by her sister.
Lionblaze gasped. "No!" he meowed, then seeing that the others were looking at him strangely, he meowed quickly, "Well, I think that both Ivyvine and Dovewing were…worthy to come on such a journey…"
"Well, what can we do with the kits?" Breezepelt asked angrily as Willowshine pressed cobwebs to his bleeding flank. "We can't afford to lose time to take the kits back, can we? Because we're about a day away from camp, and that would throw us off schedule majorly."
"There's only one thing to do, isn't there?" Dawnlight meowed sadly.
"Dawnlight, we can't do that!" Tawnypelt gasped. "It's dangerous!"
"We have to, though," Dawnlight insisted. "We have to take the kits with us."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Echobreeze felt the weight of Spottedkit holding her down. The WindClan cats and Robinflight had gone on ahead, taunting them for their stupid kits and how idiotic they looked right now. Echobreeze was carrying Spottedkit, Dawnlight was carrying Ringkit, Dovewing had Ashkit and Ivyvine had Nightkit. Tawnypelt and Willowshine were hovering around them worriedly, and they had to break frequently so that Squirrelflight could suckle them and lick off the crust around Spottedkit's eyes. Spottedkit was able to open her eyes for a day now, but at night as she slept it would come back, and they would have to go through the whole procedure in the morning. Lionblaze and Jayfeather hung to the back, bringing up the rear.
They were barely up the foot of the mountain, and already the sun was sinking. The kits were definitely hindering their journey, with their often rests and sucklings. More than once Breezepelt and Robinflight ran far off ahead and didn't come back for a while, and when they did they would be irritable that they had barely made it any further.
Echobreeze had to admit, the kits themselves weren't making it any easier. It wasn't just the fact that they were kits, but the fact that they were complaining kits.
"My scruff hurts!" Ashkit squealed.
"Maybe you should have thought about this before you came along," Dovewing meowed through his puffy fur.
"I'm hungry!" Nightkit complained.
"You just suckled a few moments ago!" Ivyvine meowed, annoyed.
"Why can't we play?" Ringkit whined.
"We have a journey to complete," Dawnlight snapped.
"I can't see! My eyes are stuck together!" Spottedkit yowled, furiously batting at her eyes with her tiny little paws.
Echobreeze's patience was wearing thin as Breezepelt meowed, not bothering to lower his voice, "I'm so glad WindClan trains their kits to behave, so they don't do stupid things like following a warrior patrol out of territory."
"If I remember correctly, Breezepelt," Jayfeather growled quietly, "Heathertail led those WindClan kits into the tunnels, didn't she? And they nearly drowned."
Breezepelt's hackles rose. "Don't you dare insult my mate."
Echobreeze sighed angrily. "Not this again! Look, Breezepelt, you and your Clanmates are just the biggest pieces of fox dung I've ever seen, okay? Now please, can we get on with the journey? It's not our fault that these kits got some crazy idea in their head to follow us! Now shut up!"
"Don't you dare insult us!"
"Don't you have a bigger vocabulary?"
"How dare you!"
"Exactly my point!"
Echobreeze dropped Spottedkit on a patch of grass, who scrambled to go play with a pebble but what picked up gently by Tawnypelt. Spottedkit let out an angry huff. "Aren't we even allowed to touch the ground?"
"No," whispered Tawnypelt. "For this ground is much more dangerous than you could imagine."
"How?" Ringkit meowed boldly, and, wrenching himself from Dawnlight's grasp, he raced forward.
"No!"
The cry came from not Dawnlight, or Echobreeze, or any ThunderClan cat.
It was Crowfeather.
Ringkit's eyes widened in terror as he tried to skid to a halt, but he couldn't stop his little paws, and with his eyes bulging, he fell into a gorge.
Another cliffie?
