HAWKWING
Freedom tasted sweeter than a lungful of newleaf air, spicy with flowers. The MeadowClan cats let him and Graymask walk from the Twoleg shack where they had been kept prisoner, and he relished the sun in his brown and gray tabby pelt.
The river was a band of glittering silver that curved through the landscape, separating the meadows from the forest. Hawkwing swept green eyes across the bank, saw cats crossing the tree-bridge in the distance, watched clanmates emerge from the reeds of the river camp and salute with tails from afar.
"Not that I'm complaining," Graymask mewed with a twitch of his tail. "But it seems foolish they would exchange Stoatjaw for the both of us, don't you think?"
Hawkwing glanced at his fellow captive, a meadow-born daylight warrior he'd learned to begrudge his respect. He fought bravely, endured pain uncomplaining, and spoke fairly. That was more than he'd ever expected from a cat who was essentially half a kittypet…
As for some of the others that leeched glory off the name of LionClan, he could not be half so courteous. That mouse-hearted Rootnose, if he had him in his claws now…
"Thistleteeth is proud," Hawkwing said with a flick of his ears. "The message he wants to send is that one MeadowClan warrior is worth two LionClan cats."
And how had that turned out for him so far?
There was a new spring in his step as he carried on toward the river camp with a new smile, a LionClan patrol rushing out to welcome them.
"Hawkwing!" Tansyslip called out with a broad smile as they met in the meadows, with Sedgetuft and Ryebreeze following close at her side. "Our joy returned again! Graymask!"
They welcomed each other with purrs and affectionate nuzzles, brushing each other's flanks, before turning to lead them back to the river camp.
"I trust you'll want to see the green hollow as soon as possible," Tansyslip mewed as they walked back, gesturing to the dark wall of trees that crowded the opposite side of the river. Home, their true camp, was nestled somewhere in that forest.
For now, Hawkwing just took joy in the small things; sunlight on his back, the buzz of bees around the wildflowers, dragonflies skirting the water. "Soon enough," the senior warrior breathed with a sigh. He suspected his Clan would need his claws again before long, out here in this endless prairie.
"You haven't yet told us how you were entertained," Tansyslip mewed.
"With scoffs and scorns and slurs," Hawkwing said with a flick of his tail. "They paraded me through that barn they call a camp. 'Here,' they said, 'is the terror of MeadowClan, the old sparrowhawk that affrights our kits.'"
Then he had broke from the warriors that led him, and with his claws started hurling clods of earth and straw at the beholders of his shame. His grisly snarl made the gawking MeadowClan kits and apprentices fly backward. Graymask just gave a knowing snort beside him.
"Then they kept us in this tiny Twoleg nest they called the shed, with warriors watching us day and night," Hawkwing went on. "As if they supposed I'd break my way out the walls with my teeth. And if I so much as stirred in my nest, they were ready to pierce us both to the heart."
Tansyslip whipped her tail. "I'm sorry to hear what torments you endured, but we will be sufficiently avenged," she promised as they approached the reed tunnel. "Come, share some fresh-kill, make a proper nest. Sorreltail is out patrolling with Embercloud, Leekroot, and Quailtail, but they'll be glad to see your face again…"
Tansyslip was first through the reed tunnel, but Hawkwing stopped, perking his ears to the faint sound of another voice on the wind.
He turned, tail whipping, to a distant speck across the prairie. A lone brown tom, shouting and hooting several tree-lengths behind them.
"Don't you hear that? What under all the stars is that fool doing?" Hawkwing demanded, pointing out the lone MeadowClan cat on the plain.
Sedgetuft just snorted with laughter while Ryebreeze gave a lazy swish of her tail. "Oh, him. Frogleap, if you know him, barely out of the apprentice's den," Ryebreeze mewed with a bitter twinge of her lips. "He's been up there almost every day, making a nuisance of himself. Must not have anything better to do since he finished his training."
Hawkwing strained to listen. "You don't frighten us, LeafClan pig-dogs…!" the distant voice sounded from across the field, tiny as the buzzing of a mosquito. "I blow my nose at you, so-called LionClan…!"
"What a strange cat," Graymask murmured.
"Shouldn't we drive him off?" Hawkwing said.
"Best ignore him," Ryebreeze yawned. "He'll just scurry back to whatever camp he came from until he comes back the next day."
Graymask bid them a polite farewell at sundown, and although his reason was left unsaid, Hawkwing knew the dark-faced tom was returning to check on his housefolk. He bit his tongue from making a comment, for the sake of the shared misery they'd endured together, and left him with a curt goodbye.
The senior warrior made his nest by the riverside that night, sitting up with the others until past moonhigh, cheered by the war-stories and camp gossip he'd missed in his absence. Leaf-bare had only begun to thaw when his patrol was ambushed, and he was left bleeding and encircled under the fruit trees. Since then, it seemed like all the color had begun to return to the world.
"How has Wrenpaw's training gone in my absence?" Hawkwing asked with a purr. He'd trained both Quailtail and Ryebreeze to their warrior names, but he'd grown a special affection for the small brown tabby, fierce as a badger despite his size. There were shades of brave Beethorn in him.
Ryebreeze smiled. "He admires and misses you desperately," she admitted. "Can't go one training session without reminding everyone who his mentor is. I think he even tries to talk like you."
"He'll lose it when he sees you tomorrow," Tansyslip mewed with a long stretch. "The entire Clan will be overjoyed."
"Yes, overjoyed to put you to work again," Sedgetuft purred. "We've missed your claws."
He'd only be glad to see the green hollow and the Father Oak, the forest in bloom, for at least one day before returning to the bloody toil.
They rose leisurely after sunrise, leaving Sorreltail and his warriors to guard the river camp. Hawkwing allowed Tansyslip to lead them down the riverbank toward the tree-bridge. White foam frothed around jutting rocks where the strong current rushed, still swollen with leaf-bare thaw and soft newleaf rains.
"What do you suppose we should do about our barn-cat problem?" the golden she-cat asked as they approached the river crossing. A long-fallen fir tree spanned the banks, half-submerged, collecting other drifting debris until it threatened to dam the river's flow.
The fir seemed to ever so subtly sway and sag as they climbed it, going two by two across the broad trunk. Tansyslip and Hawkwing, followed by Sedgetuft and Ryebreeze.
"We keep swatting at them with half-strength," Ryebreeze complained from behind. "We should gather all our warriors, storm the barn, and just drive them out."
"There's so many of these abandoned camps scattered around the prairie, they'll find some place else to move," Sedgetuft said. Then her voice lowered. "Or they'll show their bellies and mewl like kittens and beg their Twolegs to let them inside." She spoke more loosely about the daylight warriors than she otherwise would, in the company of other wild-born LeafClan cats.
"From all I could see, the camp must be enfeebled by all the light skirmishes," Hawkwing mewed. "Maybe famished from Sorreltail harassing their hunters." They had not failed to feed him once a day, every day, just enough to keep the gnawing ache out of his stomach. But they fed him all the same.
"Hello, dappy LeafClan duck-brains!" a young voice strained from the far bank, making all their heads snap in his direction. Frogleap, the brown MeadowClan tom, emerged from under the bridge, hind legs still dripping. Stones and earth were piled on the shore, where diligent paws had scooped and hollowed out the bank around the base of the fallen trunk.
Hawkwing bolted forward across the bridge, claws out and scoring grooves into the smoothed trunk with every stride, eyes set on the MeadowClan intruder. But before they were even three quarters across, already, the bridge began to shift under their paws.
Horror lurched up in his throat as the fallen tree began to turn, dragged downstream by the current from where it had been dislodged. Clumps of earth, driftwood, water plants, and rotting leaves that had accumulated around the well-used crossing went swirling into the torrent.
All four of them were suddenly sailing downriver, as Frogleap's mocking laughter burst in the air after them. He watched from the LeafClan side of the bank, waving his tail in farewell.
"Oh, StarClan's mercy…!" Tansyslip shouted before spilling over the side, disappearing into the frothing water. Ryebreeze tumbled with a yelp as the trunk began to rotate and turn over in the water, bumping and jostling against outcrops and snags, and the warrior seemed to be sucked down below into the undercurrent.
Hawkwing, with no other thought but the rivershore, leaped and went plunging into the water. He paddled blind, flopping his limbs, churning his legs, water stinging his clenched eyes and rushing up his nostrils until his claws dug into sand and stone. Gasping, head and neck finally firmly above water, he powered through the reeds to dry land, flopping to the shore.
Sedgetuft, her black fur plastered to her skin, went stumbling to his side. She lapped over his eyelids, pressed on his chest until Hawkwing shoved her away, heaving up water.
"What chance is this…?" he gasped, finding his feet, looking around wildly for his other clanmates. "Speak, if you can hear me speak! Tansyslip! Ryebreeze?!"
But no answer came. They were lost.
He hunted down the shore for them both until past sundown. The weather seemed to spoil with the day's grief, blue skies gone pale, gray clouds scuttling overhead, brisk winds shaking the trees. The promise of a building storm.
For Ryebreeze, if he had not been looking furiously up and down the water's surface, he might never have noticed her body draped around a river rock, almost fully submerged. Hawkwing and Sedgetuft waded in together to drag her to shore.
They found her fast enough. The rest of that time was searching for Tansyslip, somehow carried so far, so fast downriver. Already, the crabs and sand fleas crawled in her golden coat, only her hind legs caught and draped across dry land. When he pulled her gently out to shore, either from the force of the crushing current against the rocks or the scavenging river-life, one eye and one cheek were already hollowed away.
Such a brave warrior in battle, to meet her end like this? "Bear her body to camp; I will help to bury it," Hawkwing managed weakly, as Sedgetuft turned her head to the water, threatening to hurl up that sunup's fresh-kill.
One golden eye she had, just as the sun had one eye to view all the world. An expression that to him, seemed to scream for vengeance on the meadow-cats.
And he would deliver it. He would make his name wretched in the sound of MeadowClan's ears.
The moon was high in the night as LionClan stood vigil for their fallen clanmates, half-hidden behind black clouds. He did not envy the elders' task, but Tansyslip was turned over so the ruined half of her face was hidden among a pillow of grass, moss, and flowers; their pelts lapped dry, soft, clean.
Honeypad sank her nose into her sister's flank, as Mistpelt and Cloverfern bowed their heads over the corpse of Tansyslip.
The distant rumble of thunder made Hawkwing's hackles rise. What is this tumult in Silverpelt?
At the rustle of movement at the bramble tunnel and a warning yip from the sentries, the Clan turned their heads as a breathless warrior stumbled through the dark. Graymask, his pelt still dripping from the river, and without even speaking, Hawkwing knew it was another message of calamity.
"Honeypad…!" the daylight warrior panted. "I had to swim my way across. MeadowClan has gathered their strength. Thistleteeth's warriors, with a cat calling herself a prophet of StarClan, are attacking the river camp!"
"A prophet?" Honeypad spat in disbelief, as Elmseed's eyes narrowed into slits from the edge of the clearing. The thunder rolled in, closer and louder now, a flash of light illuminating the crowns of the treetops in the south.
This thunder… It was the groans of his dead clanmates, their spirits irked that they could not be avenged. But he would be a Tansyslip to MeadowClan, and then try what those fox-hearts dared. Prophet or fraud, warrior or kittypet, he'd stamp their hearts out with his heels, and make a quagmire of their mingled brains.