Now. This one doesn't really fit here. The problem is that when I was writing these stories I was a bit stressed and they were all over the place, so I accidentally wrote two for ch 20. This is the second one, and I thought it could go here because I forgot to write one for this chapter.

Cartesian had known. He had known as surely as he had ever known anything. Why should the gnawers want land by the Fount, why should they want to lean their shabby hides against those of their enemies? Why should they come here, when they are few in numbers by starvation and the plague, if only to take land which would never let them claim it as their home?

No, this is not like the other times. So he had shouted, and so he had cried. Fight! Fight now, they mean to kill us! But the others — their heads had been bent, their voices frantic, Hold your tongue, Cartesian, hold your tongue so we may live!

But it is not like the other times. It is not. No, he knows the promise that lingers in the snarls and scowls of the gnawers; in their growled reassurances and the resolute step of their feet.

He had not held his tongue. He had not held it until they forced him and his fellows to. And in the corner of his eye he saw his sister lay her pups in a grain basket and set it on the river — and he so longed to whisper their names, to shout, This is what it has come to, the river is safer than the journey! For the gnawers mean to kill them all.

But the others had not listened, the fear had been too deep in their bones. Each had lost a sister or a father or a friend when they had been driven from their former lands, when they had fought.

So as the gnawers herded them from this home, they fell in line and whispered quiet words to their pups. They left their nests ruffled and their games unfinished. And Cartesian's claw, frantic as the gnawers snarled, had dragged across the walls. He had made it look like a desperate attempt to stay. A gnawer cuffed him atop his head so the blood flew. But the mark bloomed beneath his paw nonetheless. And as he and the others were pulled through the Swag, he brought his paw to his head and pressed the blood into the wall.

The journey had been long. The journey is long. The journey had been long. Mothers tell their pups that it will be alright, friends comfort friends. But it will not be, it will not—

The screams. The screams. The screams, there and then gone. And blood. Something has turned soft. So soft and squashed. The screams. Somebody is moaning. Gurgling. And the world spins. Where are the others? Where are the others? The screams, there and then gone. The gnawers mean to kill them all.

He cannot find them. Had his friends not run by his side? Had his sister not touched her paws to his bruised head, had he not heard the infant voices of her pups in his ears? Had the neighbors not been a stone's throw away in the column, had the insolent nitwit not squawked so indignantly to his annoyance? Had the elderly teacher not made games for the tired pups, had not— had not?

Where are the others?

He wakes sometimes. He sees the good queen, he sees people. But not the others. Where are they? Why hears he no longer their screams? He will find them because he must. They must know. They must hear the words he speak. The gnawers mean to kill them all.

Where are the others?