NETTLEFANG
The twin shadows crossed a border stream some time after moonhigh. Nettlefang and Paleface were there to greet them, the long, lanky shadows of HillClan warriors stalking some few paces behind them. Just far enough behind them that they wouldn't forget they were there.
He wondered to himself if he could outsprint a HillClan warrior. Perhaps not, but in LeafClan, they faced threats head on instead of fleeing. If it came to it, he'd knock them all onto their backs, and all of LeafClan and MireClan too, if he had to.
Dovefeather's gray fur converted to silver under the starlight. He'd been counting down the nights to when he could lay eyes on her again. The shadow that followed her, a dappled gray-brown queen, Nettlefang hadn't counted on. His mother, Mousespots.
She hadn't even shaken the water from her paws when Nettlefang rushed to greet his mate with a fierce exchange of purrs and nuzzles. But she broke off from him fast enough, rushing up the grassy slope to her brother, the handsome white tom with mismatched eyes.
"Paleface!" Dovefeather trilled, almost bowling the warrior over. "Stars, I'm so glad you're okay!"
"So am I, sister," Paleface mewed. "I'm hoping to stay okay long enough to live and see those kits."
They wouldn't have to wait long, it seemed. It could be any day now, and a flash of hot rage that his kits might have to be born in another Clan's camp.
"Mother," Nettlefang greeted with an undertone of surprise as she followed after, yellow eyes heavy with exhaustion. "You came as well."
She batted him over the head, claws sheathed, but not holding back.
"You think Dovefeather wouldn't tell me everything, even if my toad-brained mate and hare-brained son won't?" Mousespots hissed. "Do you both think so little of me, or think of me at all?"
"I only wanted to keep you out of harm's way," he snapped back, unapologetic. Didn't he have enough troubles without his mother nagging him like a misbehaving kit? "The less you knew, the better. You both should be in the LeafClan nursery, but it looks like it can't be helped."
She just sighed, touching her tail affectionately to Nettlefang's flank.
"I know you have a warrior's name now. But I still want to protect you too. Can't you understand that?" Mousespots mewed. "I've helped raise many kits—but you're mine. My only."
Nettlefang lashed his tail, turning with a sigh of impatience. What was he to do with all these kitten-hearts?
"It feels like our camp fills with more LeafClan cats every day," he heard one of the HillClan warriors grumble as they returned to camp, a flinty-faced tom by the name of Leekroot.
"You should be rid of some of us, soon enough," Paleface mewed diplomatically. "We're bound for MireClan, upon Duskstar's word."
Bird droppings on Duskstar's word, Nettlefang thought to himself, biting his tongue. Waiting for the correct sign, whatever that meant. A moon-gazing old fool, just like the rest of these rabbit-chasers. Leader or not, what need did they have of his signs, or his permission to go here or there? They were LeafClan.
Still, he restrained himself from speaking loosely. For Dovefeather's sake, if not anyone else's. It seemed like a HillClan medicine cat might be the one to help bring his kits into the world. And not spend a day longer on this barren hilltop than they had to.
When they opened their eyes, he wanted them to see the LeafClan nursery, surrounded by LeafClan kits and the scents and sounds of the forest. All the more reason to not delay.
They walked together into the clearing, Nettlefang sweeping his gaze over the curious eyes that peeped at them from the dens, the fresh-kill pile, the high crags where the night-watchers almost seemed part of the rock itself. Some averted their gaze, some pretended not to look, others pointedly stared anywhere that wasn't in his direction.
Still, some others gawked openly at the strangers roaming freely in HillClan camp.
"Strange days," an elder piped, just on the edge of hearing. "Strange indeed."
One patched tortoiseshell she-cat emerged from the crowd to rush straight for them. For Paleface, greeting him with hushed whispers, their noses so close together their whiskers almost crossed.
He couldn't help but cock his head at Paleface and the HillClan she-cat as they brushed each other's cheeks in an intimate gesture. Like clanmates. Or…
Dovefeather flicked her ears, mirroring Nettlefang's quizzical expression, but her voice was light-hearted and playful as she spoke. "Paleface, you're better treated than I'd even hoped," she mewed.
"You're Dovefeather, yes? Paleface's sister?" the HillClan she-cat mewed, dipping her head in greeting. "He spoke of you. My name is Robinsong, and you are most welcome here. Anything you need, anything you desire, you can tell me. Here, you'll be treated as well as any HillClan queen."
"That's… very kind of you," Dovefeather mewed startingly.
Robinsong turned her eyes to Paleface, voice softening. "Duskstar seeks an audience, as soon as you're able."
"Duskstar, your father?" Paleface repeated, with a thorniness in his voice now.
"Yes, my father," she answered, stiff now. "And… I'd hoped to have a word with you as well, when you have the time."
The HillClan she-cat led their clanmate away, back down the grassy slope and away from the camp. Nettlefang's eyes followed the two of them as they left, before exchanging a glance with his mate.
"They're definitely—" he started.
"Yes!" Dovefeather finished, blurting it out with equal parts surprise and amusement. "They definitely are."
Flicking his tail, and glancing over both shoulders, he waited until Paleface and Robinsong disappeared from view, out of the camp boundaries and down the open moonlit slopes. Then, he started after them.
"Where are you going?" Dovefeather hissed, trotting at his heels. "Tell me you're not following them."
"Just a moonlit stroll, my love," he purred, shooting a glance back at her. "Won't you join me?"
The LeafClan queen opened her mouth to object, but he could see the glint in her eyes. She was just as curious as him. When he started back down the hill without waiting for her proper answer, she followed at his side, stalking the pair from a distance.
He stayed upwind, almost like tracking prey, stopping and starting whenever the two shapes ahead of him made a pause or turned to look at each other. From this distance, he could snatch a word here and there, carried on the night breeze.
"You could've told me you were Duskstar's daughter." That was Paleface, his voice faint as a mouse breaking wind, but Nettlefang strained his ears to hear.
"I didn't think it mattered."
"You couldn't have mentioned it at any point?"
"I'm sorry… I wasn't sure how to bring it up, or if I even should…"
They trailed them to the same green rise they'd all met before, its crown cloaked in greenery and away from prying eyes. Nettlefang and Dovefeather laid low in the grass.
"My paws are killing me," Dovefeather complained in a whisper. "Should we really be out here doing this?"
"Would you rather be spending this time together listening to HillClan nursery-tales?" Nettlefang countered. "Trust me, this is more interesting. You'll have the next six moons to sit on your tail in the nursery, if you want."
She sniffed in derision, but followed all the same, until they were positioned outside the shroud of bracken and holly. Paleface and Robinsong's voices filtered through, locked in hushed conversation, patches of their pelts glimpsed through the greenery.
They were close. Flank to flank, tails entwined.
"...you're HillClan, and I'm LeafClan. You know I have to leave. Maybe even tonight."
"Where you go, let me go too," Robinsong's voice came in answer, sounding on the verge of shattering like ice. "I'll fight at your side."
"You'll follow soon."
"You won't shake me off that easily. Let me travel with you, while I can still be with you. Then, when the fight's over, if we both still live…"
"Robinsong…"
"Save whatever serious thing you're about to say until we truly have to part. Then tonight, if nothing else, I want to spend what time we have left together."
After a long pause, he mewed, "Then, with all my heart."
Nettlefang had to keep himself from barking with laughter. But the mad rabbit-chaser made a fair point. Wisdom, or something, that's what these moon-eyed wind-heads were supposed to have over every other Clan.
He prodded the she-cat beside him. "We ought to find our own hill."
"Shh, you giddy goose," Dovefeather hissed. "Lie still, before you give us away."
"I'd rather listen to rutting turtles than these two."
"Do you want your head broken?"
"No."
"Then lie still."
Nettlefang was pressing his flank against hers, playfully nudging at her side. She kept trying to shush him in turn, holding her tail up over his mouth.
A rustle in the undergrowth made them both freeze in alarm, ears pivoting toward the sound. On the opposite side of the brush, Paleface and Robinsong mirrored their reaction, eyes wide and hackles on end.
"D-Duskstar!" Paleface and Robinsong both blurted in surprise, almost one voice as copper eyes blinked out from the bracken. Now, Nettlefang and Dovefeather were both on their paws, hurrying back down the slope and over the moor with muffled laughter and short breaths.
She slowed down first, and Nettlefang flopped down in the grass beside her. "Someone in your condition should be resting."
"And whose fault is that? On both counts."
Tonight, and if they only had tonight—stupid HillClan signs be permitting; the only cat he wanted to see or hear was her.
They set off late. In the gloomy hour before sunup, at first birdsong, the LeafClan warriors set off over the moor and toward where the earth seemed to sink down, down, down. A great marsh of mud and slime and stagnant puddles; he'd passed through with the others, when they returned with Burdockstar.
That was where they last left some of their clanmates. His father, Nightbird, picked up some little kitten-cough and was struggling to keep pace, even in just their mad dash away from LeafClan camp. Growing older, I suppose. Shrikewing, the medicine cat, stayed with him, along with Jaywind.
Thrushear had been supposed to stay behind with them, if he hadn't looked so prey-eyed at the thought. Afraid of being remembered as one of Rosestar's raiders, he supposed.
For Jaywind and Thrushear, it wouldn't have been their first visit to camp. Even now, it was hard not to seethe with envy that they'd both been chosen by Rosestar to go on that raid, but not him. Him, the best fighter in the entire apprentice den at the time, ready to earn his warrior name, just waiting to prove himself.
Jaywind, she'd only got that name as a convenience after Rosestar exiled her mentor. There was no way she was that much farther ahead of him, to earn her name that much faster.
Instead, he'd been left rotting on the vine. Hunting assignments with Sparrowflight, out by Tumblestone. But he supposed all the high drama that came afterward made up for it. MireClan was the beginning of the end for Rosestar, and it would be for Rowanstar too.
Mousespots agonized that she wouldn't be able to lay eyes on Nightbird, but she had ultimately stayed behind in the HillClan camp for Dovefeather's sake. That was some small seed of security in his mind.
Sparrowflight and Paleface kept pace beside him, Larkfeather and Thrushear following at their tails. Across muddy creeks and spongy, decaying vegetation, until that sour marsh smell invaded his pelt, his nostrils, feeling the mud and dirt between his toes. "Ugh, this place," he breathed.
HillClan may have been maddening, but at least they smelled better.
The air grew thick with croaking frogs, open marsh transforming into thick swamp, climbing over gnarled roots and under bowed, twisted trees, arched into tunnels.
He trusted the MireClan dawn patrol to find them better than he trusted his nose to lead them back to camp. Sure enough, they found them, half a dozen pairs of green and yellow eyes blinking out from the shadows to lead them to the muddy hollow. Thorn bushes overflowed up and over the lip of the scoop of earth, a fallen rotten tree bridging over the top of it.
A nursery tree, new life growing from its dead husk. The overhanging ferns provided extra cover over the top of camp, making the hollow feel almost enclosed from the rest of the world.
Was it drier than the marsh? Marginally. The MireClan cats had their apprentices scatter broad ferns over the ground, stowed away in the medicine den for just the purpose. It didn't help nearly enough, in his opinion. How the hollow didn't fill up with water when it rained was beyond him. Or maybe it did, for all he knew.
They ducked down through the thorn-thicket tunnel, forced to move in single file if they wanted to avoid a snag. Burdockstar and her warriors were already waiting for them, blue eyes gleaming with a hunter's anticipation.
"Finally, have you dawdled enough?" she roared, her warriors giving up a yowl as they emerged from their dens. "MireClan is ready for blood!"
He couldn't help but flash her a fierce grin, teeth bared. "Well said, Burdockstar! And every cat will have their taste!" Yes, as disgusting as this place was, and while he wouldn't say it to her face, he still much preferred Burdockstar's company to Duskstar. Even in spite of the times she'd tried to kill him.
This was a warrior and a Clan that he could at least understand, strange as they were in their own ways.
There was Shrikewing there among them, the medicine cat grave-faced as ever. He'd never seen so much as the hint of a real smile from him since he was still Shrikepaw. The gray and white tom moved forward, golden eyes heavy.
"Nettlefang," he mewed curtly, blunt as a rock. "I have to speak with you about your father."
"Is it something he can't tell me himself?" Nettlefang questioned with a lash of his tail. He glanced around the hollow now, eyes searching for Nightbird's dark pelt.
"He's grievously sick," Shrikewing said, snapping Nettlefang's attention back to him. "What's more, Jaywind is showing the same symptoms. They won't be fighting with you, that's for sure."
"Sick?" he repeated, incredulous. That kittencough, days past, had it grown worse? And spread? "How do they have the leisure to be sick at a time like this? When will they be better?"
"When they're better," Shrikewing said with a flick of his ears. "StarClan knows, not me."
Some medicine cat you are.
"Does Nightbird keep to his nest?" Sparrowflight questioned.
"Since we arrived," Shrikewing said. "Even the MireClan medicine cat fears for his health. Jaywind is young and strong, but—"
Sparrowflight grit her teeth and lashed her tail. "Couldn't this sickness have waited until after the battle? Their health was never more valued than today."
"Sick now?" Nettlefang said again, head spinning. No, it made them all sicker as a whole, to have two fewer LeafClan warriors at their side. "Thorns on it all. They're sick then. Leave them to rest."
Rowanstar would be onto their purposes, and he wasn't about to stall their proceedings now. For anything, or anyone.
"This is a heavy blow," Sparrowflight murmured.
"A bleeding gash, a tail lopped off!" Nettlefang spat. Stars, he could go into that den and give them really something to cry to the medicine cat for, but he balanced himself with a heavy exhalation. "But it doesn't change the outcome. Rowanstar is still as weak and friendless as he was before."
"But I'd still rather have them with us, all the same," Sparrowflight said. "In the eyes of the Clan, every LeafClan cat fighting at our side legitimizes our cause. Nightbird is a senior warrior, and commands respect. In their absence, it might be thought that fear or doubt in our cause keeps them away, and we look all the more like outside conquerors."
He lashed his tail irritably. "You think too much. What do we care what they think? In a battle, you're either victorious or defeated, and victors make the truth."
They all turned their heads as Burdockstar approached, ears perked and teeth bared in an eager snarl. "As heart can think," she mewed in Nettlefang's direction, with what he almost thought as a note of approval. "In MireClan, there's no such word spoken of as this term of fear."
Dawn was breaking over where the three territories joined into one, swathes of new bloomed poppies stretching to the edge of the trees. He tasted the air, stretching his claws as the raiding party assembled along the border. A dozen tails, MireClan and LeafClan, with the HillClan cats still nowhere to be seen.
Late. How could that be, they were late?
He raked his claws impatiently through the grass. By late morning, golden light filled the poppy fields, when Larkfeather's shape came darting between the flower heads. Returned, at last, from scouting.
Burdockstar, Sparrowflight, and Nettlefang stood gathered to greet her.
"Fine day for bloodshed, isn't it, Larkfeather?" Nettlefang purred.
She twitched her whiskers with not quite the same enthusiasm. "That remains to be seen," she mewed. "Getting as far as Berry Hill, I spotted Owlswoop, Sorreltail…"
"No matter. Who else?"
"And Rowanstar himself, with about all the warriors he could muster, I'd guess. What's more, a number of scents I didn't recognize. Not Clan cats."
"How could that be?" Sparrowflight hissed. "Are there rogues on our territory?"
"They shall be welcome too," Nettlefang said. Rogues, loners, foxes, badgers, bring it on. "And what about Sunfire and his kittypet of a mentor? You suppose he's been around camp enough to know his father dies today?"
"I saw Sunfire from a distance," Larkfeather said. "Golden coat gleaming, head held high, striding at his father's side. He looked every bit the warrior to me."
Nettlefang scoffed with derision. "I've hunted squirrels with more warrior spirit than that soft, lazy dormouse."
A MireClan cat raised a yowl, and they all turned their heads over toward the hills. Shapes emerged over the rise, HillClan warriors streaming after another down the grassy slopes and toward the border of the poppy fields.
Duskstar was first among them, Robinsong close at his side. Neither Paleface or the HillClan tortoiseshell disguised it as they rushed for each other, pressing against each other head to head, nose to nose.
The HillClan leader's copper eyes looked sleepless as he gazed over the raiding party.
"So three are joined in one," he mewed, voice low and somber as a dirge. "Yet my dreams were full of death, and the dawn greeted us with bloody omens. When our medicine cat opened a piece of fresh-kill to pluck through the entrails, they could not find the heart within."
"What in all the stars is that supposed to mean?" Nettlefang snarled.
"Let me tell you that it means we should not do battle today."
"Do you grow mouse-hearted?" Burdockstar snapped. "Once I dreamed that I could fly like a bird, but that doesn't mean I will."
Sparrowflight's hackles were raised, but she said nothing.
"Let Rowanstar bring a hundred warriors," Nettlefang said, tail lashing. "Let all StarClan fall down and come! Dreams and prey-guts don't determine our destiny—we do! If doomsday is here, then die all, and die merrily. But we fight all the same, and curse anyone who fears!"
"Speak not of dying," Burdockstar said. "You were right to dream of death, but the flowers will not drink our blood today. With our strength joined, we cannot be defeated."
Nettlefang turned his gaze back out toward the poppy fields, and LeafClan territory. Curse it all, they were like snagging thorns and tripping vines, keeping him from breaking out to the thicket on the other side.
If only they could fight now.
