ROWANSTAR
He fought like he'd never see dawn, and some part of him knew he wouldn't. Standing among those blood red flowers, over the graves of his ancestors, he felt the crushing weight of fate, as inexorable as the waves of poison water against the sun-drown-place. Lionpelt's words had haunted him night after night, season after season.
The forest will grow over the meadows, at the rising of the sun.
But the darkest night is still to come.
Blood will spill blood, kin will slay kin.
LeafClan will not bloom until three are joined in one.
Rowanstar could recite it like a mantra.
You will give your life among flowers, and then LeafClan shall see sunup.
In some way, it was a relief. The weeds that snared and trapped him seemed to snap, as he hurtled toward destiny.
But still, he breathed. He plunged into the ranks of the enemy, yowling and hissing and spitting, as if he really did have nine lives.
"Careful, Rowanstar!" Hawkwing shouted after him, but Rowanstar would not let it be said that he died while turning his tail. His warriors struggled to keep pace as he pressed himself deeper into the throng, ignoring pain, ignoring exhaustion, ignoring danger.
He only had one cat in his sight, white coat flashing between the HillClan ranks. Mismatched eyes, shouting hoarse encouragement to the cats beside him, a blue-eyed tortoiseshell fighting with him shoulder to shoulder. Honeypad and Ryebreeze faced them down, blow for blow, bite for bite, switching opponents as they lunged and rolled.
"Paleface!" Rowanstar shouted. Shouldering a HillClan warrior to the ground, even with pain lancing up his wounded leg with every step, he flung himself at the white coat and brought them both tumbling into the grass.
Paleface kicked and spat, and the breath escaped Rowanstar's chest as one solid jab sent him staggering back. Then the LeafClan warrior was on top of him, raining slash after slash on him.
Finally.
The world seemed to go grayscale, and Rowanstar braced himself for StarClan's endless hunting grounds. But the death blow never came. He looked up to see Paleface scampering away, tail streaming behind him.
"Why…?" he began to wheeze, clambering to his paws.
"Robinsong!" Paleface yowled. It was another cat lying low in the grass, a HillClan tortoiseshell, with Honeypad at her throat while Ryebreeze attacked her belly. Paleface bowled through them like a heap of fallen leaves, pinning Ryebreeze to the ground and wheeling around in an instant, standing on hind legs to swat Honeypad left and right across the head.
Another warrior, and another warrior went flying at him. Paleface ducked low, letting Owlswoop roll over him, but caught the brunt of Boulderstep's charge. He cried out in pain, but never faltered, digging his claws into the earth as he threw the larger warrior back, still standing over the HillClan she-cat.
Another, and another.
"Fall back, Paleface!" a voice commanded. Duskstar's low rumble, as Asterstripe struggled beneath the leader's paws. "Save yourself!"
But Paleface stood over the bloodied HillClan warrior, her breathing faint, without even the strength to lift her head. He looked like a cat drowning as waves of LeafClan warriors began to envelop him, the HillClan ranks folding back, but still, Paleface would not yield ground. He rolled in the grass with Asterstripe, exchanged swipes with Owlswoop.
It looked like he might disappear beneath the swarm of attackers, until a piercing battle-cry rang out across the night. Duskstar plunged in among them with a ferocious yowl, flinging Owlswoop into the earth and making Boulderstep jump back.
"I said, save yourself!" Duskstar snarled.
Paleface seized the injured she-cat by the scruff and began to pull her back across the grass, pull by pull, as Duskstar stood alone between them and the front of LeafClan warriors.
Rowanstar felt a spark of fire in his chest, moving to run. But his legs faltered beneath him, refusing to sprint, like his feet were trapped in quicksand. "Don't let him escape!"
But Paleface, even dragging dead weight behind him, faded further and further into the distance.
"HillClan! Retreat!" Duskstar cried one last time, before he was swallowed up by the LeafClan warriors. With hisses and cries of dismay, one by one, the HillClan warriors wheeled and bolted across the grass, leaving Duskstar bleeding and breathless on the ground.
At the cry of retreat, the MireClan cats across the field all raised and turned their heads, tails going up in alarm. Burdockstar was among them, shambling like a creature half-dead, her bluish-gray pelt almost black with blood.
"MireClan!" she boomed, as their HillClan allies melted away around them. "Fall back!"
And he watched her turn, retreating across the field at a limping half-jot, her warriors sprinting ahead of her.
Rowanstar cast a glance up at the stars, mouth parted in silent prayer. Unsure if he should say thanks, or question why. But his warriors didn't wait for his next command—with yowls of victory, they went chasing the HillClan and MireClan tails as they cleared off toward the border, and he watched their shapes recede in numbed silence.
Duskstar laid still in the grass, just long enough that Rowanstar wondered if he might ever get up—until with a sudden jolt, he sat upright again, sucking oxygen into his lungs with a hoarse gasp.
Then he too was gone. Fleeing across the flowers until he was swallowed up in the greenery, belly low to the ground, tail dragging behind him.
LeafClan… had won?
"LeafClan has won!" Rowanstar roared to his warriors as the moon climbed into the sky, as if he never doubted it. "The day is ours!"
They ranged the fields, to find who was living, and who was dead. Beethorn, her apprentice and kin mourning at her side, and Boulderstep too, the stoic tom unexpectedly sinking to the ground at the sight of her lifeless body.
Larkfeather. Always an old favorite of Rosestar's, living in cold scorn after his death. They almost stumbled over her in the grass, a jagged wound across her throat, already long gone. Asterstripe's kill, although the tom never claimed the credit. He looked impassively down on the corpse as if it were any piece of crowfood.
Then there were both his sons, Goosebelly, and the retired medicine cat, all bickering with young Nettlefang lying unceremoniously nearby.
"A scratch?" Sorreltail scoffed. "His face—"
"Shh!" Goosebelly hissed. "He's had worse."
"Liar!"
Sunfire glanced between them, his tail turned as Rowanstar and his warriors approached.
"Just a flesh wound," Goosebelly assured his former apprentice.
When Sunfire turned to see their leader approached, they all stopped in their tracks. He'd already seen it in the battle, one good eye full of fury, the other… patched, hairless, full of blood, scored near to the bone. From his brow down to the top of his neck, the left side of his face was a brutal, shredded ruin.
Sunfire's apprentice screeched. "Oh no!" Mistpaw mewed. "Sunfire, they clawed your face off!"
He flashed them a lopsided grin, more menacing than anything. "It can't be that bad—"
"Good StarClan!" Ryebreeze gasped as her brother turned his head.
His kitten-hearted son… Perhaps, he'd truly become a warrior today. Rowanstar stared at him hard and long, until Sunfire caught his gaze. Instinctively, he seemed to turn the injured side of his face away, as if ashamed.
"A warrior should be honored for their scars," Rowanstar mewed. "They are proof of our valor. And Sunfire, you were the fiercest among LionClan tonight. Let no cat ever call you mouse-heart."
Sunfire still hung his head low, not lifting his eyes. But he seemed to dip lower at Rowanstar's words, silent tears flowing down his cheeks.
Still, his mind burned. Lying there, gasping what he thought might be his last breath, when he glanced up and saw Sunfire streaking across the poppies like a comet. His fur, blazing like the dawn, almost blinding in his sight. Just when Burdockstar should have struck him down, he emerged.
A sign. A sign…
But of what?
The sunup.
They found Sparrowflight limping alone through the grass. When Sorreltail and Owlswoop closed in on her, she simply flopped down where she was discovered, closing her eyes, breathing ragged breaths.
Rowanstar stalked around to face her, nose to nose, as Owlswoop and Sorreltail propped her upright again. "Oh, Sparrowflight," he growled. "Did I not offer grace, forgiveness, and friendship to all of you? And would you twist my words and lie, and misuse your kin's trust?"
Owlswoop had told him everything he'd heard and seen among the enemy ranks.
"Many warriors would still be alive this moonrise, if you had acted with honor," the leader continued, glowering down at the smaller she-cat. What could she have to say for herself?
She met his gaze evenly, green eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. "What I did, my safety urged me to," she mewed. "And I embrace this fate patiently, since it falls on me unavoided."
Rowanstar lunged with a fox's ferocity, grabbing Sparrowflight by the throat with his teeth and dragging her to the earth. Sorreltail and Owlswoop had to dance aside, gasps and winces from the LeafClan cats as Sparrowflight twitched once under Rowanstar's killing bite, and went still without a sound.
Not so much as a yelp.
His warriors were silent as he finally released her, fangs and claws stained with blood.
"Every cat move in pairs, and comb the fields. We'll leave no one unaccounted for."
They almost stumbled over Thrushear, almost hidden in the grass. Rowanstar watched from a short distance as warriors circled the still form, and he thought the young tom might also be on his journey to Silverpelt.
But a long moan of pain told him the LeafClan warrior was still alive.
Rowanstar stalked over, Sunfire and Sorreltail at his side. Thrushear laid trembling on the ground, with open cuts along his flank desperately in need of cobwebs.
"Mercy," Thrushear pleaded with a frayed voice. "I beg you."
Mercy? Rowanstar lashed his tail, sparing only cold looks for the young warrior. Once Briarstalk's apprentice, and her kit. And like the rest of her kin, he had betrayed LeafClan.
"How can any warrior in LeafClan trust you, Thrushear? After you abandoned our Clan to fight alongside our enemies?"
Thrushear only lowered his head, and Rowanstar felt his claws unsheathe. But Sunfire stepped forward between them, his good eye blazing.
"Enough LeafClan blood has been spilled today, Rowanstar," Sunfire mewed. "Give Thrushear a chance to prove his loyalty."
"I will!" Thrushear said. "I admit my fault…"
Rowanstar turned that cold stare on Sunfire, tail lashing more furiously now. But at last, he dipped his head in assent.
"Then stand, Thrushear. And may you live to redeem your Clan's lost opinion."
Murkpool stooped with leaf bundles at Thrushear's side. They had hardly padded a fox-length away when distant yowls of victory broke the night silence, stopping them in their tracks. A black and white cat went streaking across the field toward them—not LeafClan, but one of the rogues recruited from Twolegplace.
How he thought his head might burst off his shoulders the first time he caught their scent, approaching camp, with Sunfire and Goosebelly leading them. But LeafClan had been in no position to refuse their aid, and true to their word, they had fought.
"Socks," Sunfire purred. "It's a happy surprise that you're not dead or fled."
"And you owe me a name, Mister Sunshine. And much more than that. LodgeClan has trapped one big, mean rat…"
The rogue led them over the fields, almost toward the MireClan border, where the ground turned slick and potted with mud. They climbed a grassy bank where the ground suddenly dipped into a muddy ditch, overgrown with tall fronds.
Standing there battered and defiant in the mud, smeared all over in grime and gore, was Burdockstar. The MireClan leader looked as if she could barely stand from the countless wounds in her pelt, but still she hissed and swatted at the half-dozen rogues who lined the ditch.
How fortune could flip over just one sundown. Burdockstar at his mercy, once again. This time, he'd be mouse-brained to give her another opportunity to break free. She'd never stop harrying him or LeafClan as long as she lived.
"Rogues!" Burdockstar spat. "There's no low that LeafClan won't sink to. Bring your worst! My Clan will avenge me."
He turned to his son beside him, remembering with all-too-vivid clarity how he'd screamed and writhed beneath the leader's claws.
"It's your followers who captured her," Rowanstar said. "What would you have us do with her, Sunfire?"
His son seemed to seize up, glancing from him to Burdockstar down below, for a moment looking paralyzed with indecision. Rowanstar watched how Sunfire lifted his tail up, hovering just above his scarred face, what could only be a permanent reminder of Burdockstar's wrath for the rest of his life. But he relaxed his shoulders with a long sigh.
"Then set her free," Sunfire said. "Valor should be cherished, even in the hearts of our enemies."
The MireClan leader gaped up at them in disbelief, and Rowanstar whipped his tail, giving a nod. "Give her leave to part. And remember this night the next time you set your eyes on LeafClan territory."
The rogues shrunk back, and Burdockstar shot through the gap, as fast as her limping pace would allow.
"You're more magnanimous than I," Sorreltail murmured to his littermate. "I'd pay her back threefold."
"I hope this isn't a decision we'll regret," Owlswoop mewed. "Burdockstar would never return such mercy to any of us."
Doubt gnawed at him. But still, Rowanstar watched her go. There were other enemies still out there, beyond their borders. Paleface, Nightbird, Shrikewing, Jaywind, and others; HillClan and MireClan; MeadowClan and the flowers that still awaited him.
But this time, he'd won. And StarClan willing, he'd live to see another sunup.
"Enough death. Let us go home, LeafClan," Rowanstar said. It would be a long walk back to camp.
The moon gleamed through the clouds, with LeafClan gathered around the Hollow Ash. Of all the sad and gut-turning scenes of violence he'd seen in the battle, or in all his moons in camp, nothing was quite so horrible as the wailing of Beethorn's kits.
Without even Mousespots or Dovefeather or any other queen to comfort them. They mewled piteously from the nursery, inconsolable.
"When will she come back?!" Waspkit cried again, and again, no matter what Close-eye or any of the apprentices said to her.
"She journeys to endless hunting grounds, little one," Close-eye mewed gently. "A journey we all must take, and where one day, we'll all meet again. She is starlight and wind, and she listens even now. You only need to remember her to bring her close. Talk to her when you feel lonely, little one. She will hear you."
Rowanstar fixed himself at the base of the Ash, watching the Clan in silence. LeafClan was without a deputy, and moonhigh approached.
The warrior code demanded a decision.
He climbed the low bough with a yowl, swinging beneath his weight as the Clan gathered around him.
"Cats of LeafClan," Rowanstar mewed. "We may have won today, but we lost a noble warrior, and our deputy. She is not easily replaced."
His eyes swept over the gathered warriors. Who might be a leader in such a wicked world?
No cat was more loyal to the warrior code than Hawkwing, no one fiercer in battle than his brother Boulderstep. Owlswoop had always lent his ear, kept his trust, and gave him sage counsel.
But his eyes locked on another cat, half their face scourged with deep, fresh wounds, one eye still swollen close. Murkpool had committed no answers if he might be able to keep his vision.
The most worthless warrior in LeafClan, some had said aloud, when they thought he might not hear. But they all knew. Yet he couldn't shake the vision, from the moment before what should've been his death, the warrior's pelt blazing like flame.
"I say these words before StarClan, that Beethorn's spirit may hear and approve my choice," Rowanstar said. He was almost unsure of the name that might leave his mouth, but after a hard swallow, he found the words. "The new deputy will be Sunfire."
The clearing was chillingly silent. No loud yowls of congratulations, no chanting the new deputy's name. And Sunfire himself, it was as if all the stars in Silverpelt had fallen down on him, his eyes wide, mouth agape.
Goosebelly's voice broke out over the clearing alone, with a loud, much-too-enthusiastic cheer. "Sunfire! Sunfire! Sunfire!"
No one else joined in.
"It is with StarClan's guidance that I make this decision. Sunfire, you have been reborn today in your Clan's sight. And so long as you maintain your vow to me, I know you shall serve us well."
A few cats padded to Sunfire's side. Sorreltail and Honeypad, offering congratulations, Mistpaw bouncing excitedly nearby, Ryebreeze offering him a friendly lock over the ear. But as for Sunfire himself, he looked iced over from ears to tail.
Other cats slipped away in silence, or exchanged uneasy whispers at the edge of the clearing. Rowanstar just bounded down from the Ash and ducked inside his den, longing for the silence and sanctuary of his nest.
StarClan save us if I'm wrong.