SUNSTAR
The waves of MeadowClan cats crashed over them again and again, until he thought it might never end. But the tide of fighting bodies receded again, and Sunstar staggered about on the shore, dazed and breathless cats scattered up and down the island.
A breath. Just another breath, a break between waves. MeadowClan cats still gathered on the other side of the stream for yet another charge, swarming around everywhere he looked like carrion-birds.
Many shapes lie still in the mud and the streambed. Blood and rain choked his senses, forbidding him from being able to tell a clanmate from the enemy.
"Sunstar, we have prisoners!" Owlswoop shouted. A wounded MeadowClan cat struggled weakly beneath the senior warrior's weight, while another two laid hardly conscious beside them, without even the strength or sense left to flee.
"We've done well, thrice-valiant LeafClan!" Sunstar cried out, rallying warriors to the sound of his voice. He saw Hawkwing, blood crusted to his muzzle, and Swiftstorm's face and pelt caked with mud. Tansyslip lay on the shore, faintly breathing, but only barely. "But all's not done! MeadowClan still keeps the field!"
His deputy approached through the rain, dipping his head low as he approached the LeafClan leader. "Asterstripe is commended to you, Sunstar," Boulderstep mewed.
"Does he live, Boulderstep?" Sunstar asked urgently, ears flattening. "Three times I saw him down, thrice up again and fighting. From ears to tail, all blood he was."
"In which blood, brave warrior, does he lie," Boulderstep said, his voice low and heavy as a stormcloud. "And by his bloody side, noble Kestrelstrike also lies."
Sunstar felt his breath hitch, a hard lump in his throat.
Boulderstep's gaze seemed somewhere else. "Kestrelstrike died first, and Asterstripe, all haggled over, came to him where he lay steeped in gore… And took him by the whiskers, brushed the gashes that yawned so bloodily on his face.
"And he cried aloud, 'Wait, Kestrelstrike. My spirit will keep yours company in StarClan. Wait, sweet soul, for mine; then fly together, as we fought together.'
"Upon these words I came and cheered him up. He smiled me in the face, touched his paw to mine, and with a feeble touch, said, 'Boulderstep, commend my service to Sunstar.'
"So did he turn, and threw his wounded arm over Kestrelstrike's neck and licked his ear… And so, began his journey to Silverpelt. The pretty and sweet manner of it forced those waters from my eyes that I would have stopped, but I did not have enough warrior in me… And all my kithood came into my eyes and gave me up to tears."
Silent waters poured down from the stoic, stone-faced deputy's eyes, indistinguishable from the driving rain.
Sunstar touched his tail to Boulderstep's shoulders, swallowing hard. "I don't blame you," he said hoarsely, blinking the mist from his eyes. But another pained, blood-curdling scream set his hackles on end, coming from within the hawthorns.
He went bounding toward the source of the scream as it ripped out again, Boulderstep close at his tail. Leekroot stooped over a small, huddled shape, raked with terrible wounds. Two more apprentices laid in their own blood. Mistpelt looked faint, her face a mask of horror.
A MeadowClan warrior laid dead among them, white fur turned dark with grime and blood, a crimson gash across their throat.
"Did we win?" Sedgepaw breathed weakly, her voice a ragged whisper. Then she let her head slump to the ground. Three clear scratches swiped across Elmpaw's face, but she still put pressure on Shadepaw's bloody wounds, incoherent prayers still tumbling from her lips.
But there was no life in Acornpaw. "Oh no, no, no, no…" Leekroot whimpered, rustling the tiny apprentice, as if he might stir awake with the right prodding. He looked up at Mistpelt now, his green eyes tortured. "To kill an apprentice," he hissed. "It's expressly against the warrior code… It's as horrible a fox-hearted crime as can be done, is it not?!"
"The cowardly mouse-hearts that ran from the battle did this slaughter," Mistpelt whispered faintly. And Leekroot, weeping, thrust his face into her shoulder, as she stared down at the small golden-brown body left in the mud.
Somewhere among them, Old Scratch yowled rage into the sky.
Sunstar's hackles were up, his vision narrowing into a long tunnel, nothing but the roar of blood in his ears. Until he heard the yowl of MeadowClan warriors rise up in the sky again, preparing for yet another charge.
"I was not angry since I came to MeadowClan, until this instant…!" Sunstar roared, whirling around to look at his surviving warriors gathered around him. They had not enough paws between them all to keep guard over MeadowClan captives. "Kill your prisoners! Show no quarter! To your places!"
He rushed to the edge of the stream, meeting the desperate, foxish faces in the water. Sunstar did not even check if his warriors followed him to the battle, and the next charge seemed to pass by in a dream, his spirit hovering over another cat's nightmare.
Like a dream, fervently felt, but forgotten in a blink upon waking.
The next thing Sunstar knew, he was standing paw-deep in the red water, breathless and bruised, surrounded by heaps of bodies. And still, even still, more MeadowClan cats gathered on the other bank, a dark pall spreading over the grass. A cloud of gnats that seemed to never lose numbers, or shape, no matter how many times he swatted at them.
He'd claw through every single one of them if he had to.
"Go, Boulderstep," Sunstar growled. "You see those warriors still gathered there? If they will fight with us, bid them to come again, or void the field. They offend my sight! If they'll do neither, we will come to them, and make them skirr away as swift as sparrows. And we will cut the throats of every MeadowClan cat we find, and not a single one of them will taste our mercy! Go and tell them so!"
Boulderstep never had the time to obey. "Here comes the MeadowClan medicine cat, Sunstar!" he pointed out with a gesture of his tail.
"His eyes are humbler than they used to be," Honeypad growled.
Another skinny, lone shape came streaking toward them across the grasslands, and legs churning without his input, Sunstar went fording through the stream to meet them.
Raggedweed had barely reached the water's edge when Sunstar lunged at him with a snarl. The thin long-haired tabby crumpled beneath him with a shriek as the leader wrestled him to the mud.
"How now, what's the meaning of this, medicine cat?!" Sunstar snarled in his face, as Raggedweed's yellow eyes grew to the size of Gathering moons. "Come again for ransom?!"
"No, great leader!" Raggedweed wailed, flat on his back in submission. "I come to you for charitable license, that we may wander over this bloody field, to count our dead and bury them! To tend to our wounded, and allow our clanmates to share their final tongues." He peeled back in fear, whiskers trembling. "Oh, give us leave, dread Sunstar, to view the field in safety and dispose of their dead bodies…!"
Sunstar stared deep, searchingly into the medicine cat's face, hardly a whisker-length away. "I tell you truly, Raggedweed," he said shakily, the fire dissipating from his voice now. "I do not know if the day is ours or no." Many MeadowClan warriors still swarmed the other side of the bank.
Raggedweed gave a hard swallow. "The day," he started faintly, "is yours."
Sunstar released the medicine cat, stumbling backwards, and then collapsing on his haunches in the stream. His warriors rushed up to prop him up, as he lifted his eyes up to the still-weeping sky.
"Praise be to StarClan, and not our strength for it," Sunstar sighed, closing his eyes. Boulderstep and Honeypad flanked him to keep him upright. "What is this hunting ground called by the MeadowClan cats…?"
The MeadowClan medicine cat slowly got to his paws, half-smeared in mud now himself. "We call it the hawthorns."
"Then we call this the battle in the hawthorns, fought before the third full moon of leaf-bare…" Sunstar said, almost dizzy in his fatigue now. There was a hard stinging in his eyes.
Leekroot raised his head from among the warriors, half his whiskers clawed from his face. "Your leader of famous memory, and Blackfang, as I've heard it told, fought a most brave battle here in MeadowClan."
Sunstar blinked, uncomprehending. His mind was somewhere far else. "They did, Leekroot," he answered weakly.
"It's very true," Leekroot said, shuffling his paws. "Even in HillClan we tell that story, to teach our young cats the meaning of bravery. It's a mark of great honor for your Clan."
"It's an honor we share," Sunstar mewed, his voice choking, approaching him now with a staggering step and bumping noses. "Because you are LeafClan too, good clanmate."
And finally, his last twig of composure broke, and Sunstar went sobbing into the pale gray tom's shoulder.
Leekroot's eyes brimmed with proud tears now. "All the water in the river could not wash the LeafClan blood out of my body now, I can tell you that…!" he purred. "StarClan bless it and preserve it and my leader too."
"Thanks, my clanmate," Sunstar managed, blinking the ugly tears from his eyes and pulling away.
"By all the stars, I am your clanmate!" Leekroot said, grinning through his tears, green eyes bright. "I don't care who knows it, I'll confess it to all the world. And I never need to be ashamed of it, praised be StarClan, so long as my leader is an honest cat."
Sunstar touched his tail to Leekroot's shoulder. "StarClan keep me so." He swept his eyes over the other few scattered survivors now. "Go with Raggedweed, help him count the dead from both Clans. And call Sedgepaw to me."