ACORNPAW
Not all the brave looks and words in the world could mask so much fear-scent. It was palpable, a miasma that choked their little island in the stream. All the world on the other side of the creek might as well have been a gaping abyss, instantly lethal to whichever LeafClan creature dared to leap across.
All they could do was sit, and wait, and watch. Acornpaw gathered behind the other warriors, half-hidden in the hawthorns, heart in his throat as the silhouettes of MeadowClan cats lined the edge of the grasslands.
"It reminds me of the battle in the poppies," Mistpelt murmured to Kestrelstrike beside her. "Remember, we still won that one." That was the famous victory that his mother had given her life in, slain by Burdockstar herself according to the stories.
If she was looking down at him now, he only wanted to make sure he didn't embarrass her spirit. Sedgepaw beside him looked a hundred seasons away, poised like a warrior, but Shadepaw quivered, and Elmpaw closed her eyes and mumbled to herself in prayer, her head low.
"But look," Asterstripe said, his voice almost a whisper as he gestured his tail around. Acornpaw followed with his eyes, and his heart almost dropped, as the other warriors cursed, moaned, or took in sharp breaths. "This is nothing like that."
The MeadowClan cats stretched on and on, across both banks. Their pelts seemed to blend together in his eyes, so dizzy as he tried to count them.
"Where is Sunstar?" Honeypad asked, her voice low.
"He's gone himself to survey the field," Sorreltail answered.
"They have dozens of warriors," Owlswoop said in disbelief. "Are these the daylight warriors they speak of?"
"There's five to one," Boulderstep growled, yellow eyes set. "Besides, they're all fresh."
"StarClan's claws strike with us," Tansyslip mewed, almost breathless. The golden she-cat glanced around, eyes wide. "That's fearful odds. StarClan be with you all. If we don't meet again until we meet in Silverpelt… then joyfully, Sorreltail, Honeypad, Boulderstep, Hawkwing, all of you, farewell."
"Good luck go with you, Tansyslip," Sorreltail said with a bow of his head.
"Farewell," Boulderstep sighed. "Fight valiantly today. But I do you wrong to remind you of it, since you're the image of valor itself."
Full of valor as well as of kindness, Acornpaw thought. He didn't know what prayers he might send up to StarClan, but he was sure to come up with something.
"Oh, if only we had ten more warriors," Owlswoop said, sending a silent glance up to the sky, as if begging for StarClan themselves to supply them.
"Who's that who wishes so?" a voice rang out. They turned their heads as Sunstar approached through the morning fog, along the water's edge, striding in front of his warriors. His scarred face examined them all, eyes flicking from cat to cat. Those mismatched eyes finally landed on the brown dappled senior warrior. "You, Owlswoop?"
Silence answered him. All the warriors of the Clan looked on him now with blank, helpless gazes, thin and ragged as standing corpses.
"No, Owlswoop," Sunstar said after a long pause. "If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our Clan loss. And if to live, then the fewer warriors, the greater share of honor. StarClan's will, please do not wish for one more cat. Because if it's a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.
"Do not wish for one more! Rather let it be heard by every cat here, Owlswoop, that he with no stomach to fight, let them depart. We would not die in that cat's company, who fears to die with us."
Sunstar moved among them now, every set of eyes following him. He gestured skyward with his tail. "Soon it will be the third full moon of leaf-bare. They that outlive this day and come safe home, will stand on tiptoe when this day is named. They that shall see this day, and live to old age, will yearly gather their clanmates and say, 'Tomorrow is the full moon.'
"Then they will part their fur and show their scars, and say, 'These wounds I had before the full moon.'
"Elders forget, and all shall be forgot, but they'll remember with advantages what feats they did that day!" His voice rose now, eyes glowing. "Then shall our names, Sunstar, Sorreltail and Boulderstep, Swiftstorm and Hawkwing, Tansyslip and Honeypad, be in their stories freshly remembered.
"This story, every good mentor will teach their apprentice, and this leaf-bare moon will never go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered!
"We few, we happy few—we band of brothers. Because he that sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother. And every cat still in their nests will think themselves cursed they were not here, and hold their warrior names cheap while any cat speaks, who fought with us today!"
The LeafClan cats answered with a deafening roar, eyes aglow, claws unsheathed. Warriors yowled their battle-frenzy to the sky, spirits soaring high over the muddy grasslands.
"For Sunstar!" one voice cried.
"For LeafClan!" cried another.
The crows circled above, impatient of their delay.
"Sunstar!" Tansyslip gestured with her tail toward the shifting lines of MeadowClan cats. "They will charge us at any moment!"
"All things are ready if our minds are so," Sunstar answered.
"Perish the cat whose mind is backward now!" Owlswoop bellowed.
Sunstar twitched his whiskers as he glanced at the senior warrior. "You don't wish for more help, Owlswoop?"
"StarClan's will, Sunstar," Owlswoop answered, yellow eyes bright. "If only you and I alone, without more help, could fight this battle!"
"Why, now you've unwished ten warriors, which I like better than to wish us one," Sunstar mewed with a wink. "You know your places! StarClan be with you all!"
The LeafClan cats cheered again, forming a thin line on either side of the island in the stream. MeadowClan warriors would be crashing in on them from every side, breaking over them like the tide.
One cat approached alone over the grasslands. The MeadowClan medicine cat with the kinked tail, once again, striding boldly toward them across the field.
Raggedweed stopped a safe distance away before shouting, his voice projecting over the rain and faint squawk of crows. "Once more I've come to know, Sunstar, if you will agree to a sum for your ransom, before your most assured overthrow."
"Who has sent you now?" Sunstar growled.
"The deputy of MeadowClan," Raggedweed answered.
"Then please, bear my former answer back. Tell them to catch me and then sell my bones. Good StarClan, why do they mock us so?!" Sunstar's face turned to snarl. "Let me speak proudly: tell Morningsky we are but warriors for the working day. Our smiles and our pelts are all muddied by rainy marching in the painful field. But by the stars, our hearts are in the trim.
"Raggedweed, save your labor. Come no more for ransom, medicine cat. They shall have none, I swear, but these joints. Tell the deputy."
The medicine cat swished his broken tail, gently shaking his head as he turned. "I shall, Sunstar," Raggedweed mewed. "And so farewell. You never shall hear from me anymore." With that, he started back up across the fields, toward the MeadowClan lines.
"I fear you will come again for ransom," Sunstar growled under his breath.
Asterstripe approached their leader now, the pale blue-gray tom bowing deep in respect.
"Sunstar," the senior warrior mewed. "I most humbly beg to lead the vanguard."
"Take it, brave Asterstripe," Sunstar said softly, touching the tip of his tail to Asterstripe's shoulder. "Now, LeafClan, stand ready! And StarClan, dispose the day as you please."
They stood watching with bated breaths as Raggedweed returned to the MeadowClan ranks. Innumerable shadows stretched in a broad half-moon around them, the jaws of a fox or horns of a stag closing in on the island of hawthorns.
Their ranks shifted, their pawsteps turning to thunder as they roared down the hill, washing over the grassy slopes in a tide of long pelts and streaming tails. The air itself shook as MeadowClan charged, and LeafClan yowled to the air, bracing themselves on the opposite side of the bank.
MeadowClan crashed in through the stream, sending up plumes of water as they forded fearlessly through the shallows and into the waiting claws of the LeafClan warriors. Their ranks shivered as the two war parties collided, Acornpaw pressing himself low to the ground, screams splitting the sky as cats tangled together in the shallow waters of the creek.
He saw Asterstripe in the middle of the stream, grappling with a silver tabby, and Kestrelstrike sliping and staggering on wet creek stones. Three cats swarmed over great Boulderstep's back, and Acornpaw felt his heart skip a beat when he saw a tom with ginger and white patches force Mistpelt's head underwater. She rolled her shoulders, shaking the cat off and raising her head with a hoarse gasp, before another young cat slammed into her side.
Then there was Old Scratch, her voice bellowing over the din as she slashed and cut away at a reddish-brown tom beneath her. She had no form, no restraint, already breathless in her desperate flurry as she landed blow after blow on the vulnerable MeadowClan tom sprawled beneath her.
"Yield, cur!" she hissed.
"W-what is that scent?" the tom growled, kicking feebly at her trying to gain leverage for the belly rake, but to no avail. "You're a rogue! An actual rogue!"
"I'm Scratchclaw, and as good a warrior as Leafstar," Old Scratch rasped, holding a clawed paw over the reddish tom's head. "And what is your name?"
"Stoatjaw," the tom hissed. "Oh, good StarClan…"
"StarClan can't save you now!" Old Scratch hissed with a fierce grin. "You die on the end of my claws, Stoatjaw, unless you give me ransom!"
"A what?!"
"Give me three pieces of fresh-kill, and no fish, and you may live. Or else, I feed you to a den of stoats!"
"Do you have tadpoles in your head?" Stoatjaw cried. "Good StarClan, have mercy!"
Scratch went in for the killing slash, but Stoatjaw managed to roll, tumbling together in the mud until gray and red fur became all brown. Acornpaw, creeping through the brush hardly a fox-length away from the teeth of battle, gave an incredulous sigh as he saw Stoatjaw retreat back across the stream, his tail streaming behind him.
Acornpaw never knew such a full voice to project from such an empty heart. But the saying was true: 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.'
Sneezy and Nimble had ten times more valor than this roaring rogue scraped off the cobblestones of Twolegplace, and they were both gone. So would this rogue be gone, if she ever dared think about stealing from LeafClan.
He watched Owlswoop, blood dripping profusely from a gash across his cheek, slam one warrior to the ground, only for two more to lunge at him from the creek. Leekroot danced and bobbed, and he seemed like a hare ringed among a skulk of foxes. The LeafClan ranks pressed back, and back, folding inwards toward the shady center of the island like a fist.
And so Acornpaw crept back, and back, his eyes darting to the other apprentices. By Sunstar's command, they had to hang back, to run rather than fight if it came to that… Under no circumstances, were they supposed to unsheathe their claws except to defend themselves.
He sidled beneath a hawthorn, and hid with the others, their fur bushed out. But watching Sorreltail seem to hold five cats off from the top of a stone jutting over the water, Honeypad and Tansyslip fighting side by side, he felt his heart begin to swell. Somewhere, Swiftstorm yowled out in pain.
His eyes met Sedgepaw, and then Shadepaw, as Elmpaw continued to clench her eyes shut and pray.
"We need to help," Acornpaw said faintly, with Sedgepaw and Shadepaw matching his brave nod. And steeling his heart, emerging out from under the hawthorn, the tiny apprentice roared his battle cry to the rain-riven sky and plunged headlong into the maelstrom of violence.