Swiftpaw's Chance: Chapter 7
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“So what is this about?” Dogscar asks. “Are you here to tell me it wasn’t my fault and not to attack any of my Clanmates again? I’m not stupid.”
Cinderpelt tips her head to him. “You’re right. You aren’t. And no, that’s not what I was going to say. Actually I was going to ask if you knew what marigold looks like.”
“Why?” Dogscar grumbles. “You can find herbs all by yourself just fine. And aren’t you supposed to have a guard when you go out? To make sure nothing hurts you?”
“I’ve got you,” Cinderpelt says. “Marigold, yes or no?”
Dogscar nearly rolls his eyes. “Yes, obviously. Yellow and orange flowers. And shouldn’t your guard be someone who isn’t at risk of attacking you?”
Cinderpelt hums. “Maybe. What’s it for? The marigold.”
“To keep out infections. You’ve used it on me and Brightpaw a thousand times by now,” Dogscar says exasperatedly. “Are we going to talk about anything important, or just plants?”
“Herbs are what I use to heal cats, Dogscar, and they’re what saved your life. They’re important. But yes, we are going to talk about you , since I know that’s what you meant.”
Dogscar looks away. “So, talk.”
“Why don’t you start?” Cinderpelt asks. “You’re the one inside your head all day, I’m just observing. You blame yourself for the dog attack, yes?”
“Obviously. It was my idea, I forced Brightpaw into it. I snuck out.”
Cinderpelt nods. “Right. And you blame, well, just about any other cat you lay eyes on, right?”
Dogscar fixes his eyes on the trees in front of them and doesn’t answer.
“Is that a yes or a no? Or do you not want to answer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Bluestar is the one who refused to make anyone but Cloudtail a warrior, which prompted all of this. That makes it her fault, right?”
Dogscar cuts his eyes sideways to Cinderpelt. It feels like a leading question, like a trap, but he can’t tell where the trail of it ends. “Yes,” he says carefully.
“And since Fireheart, as her deputy, could have tried to convince her to make you and Brightpaw warriors as well, that makes it sort of his fault as well, doesn’t it?” Cinderpelt asks.
“Sort of.”
“And Longtail and Whitestorm—they’re your mentors. It’s their job to tell Bluestar when their apprentices are ready to become warriors. It’s their job to make sure that happens.” Cinderpelt says. “Am I wrong?”
“Well, no,” Dogscar says.
Cinderpelt veers off the trail towards a patch of dark blue flowers. She gestures to them with one paw. “What’s this?”
Dogscar sniffs at them. “Borage.”
“Good. What’s it for?” Cinderpelt asks.
“Well, you used it when Dappletail had a fever the other day. I remember that,” Dogscar says.
“You pick up a lot,” Cinderpelt says, plucking some of the stems and bundling them together against the tree roots to pick up later.
Dogscar shrugs. “Not like I had anything else to do. Is there a reason you’re quizzing me on herbs?”
“No, just curious. Not many cats have a knack for remembering things.” Cinderpelt says, and starts walking again. “So, one more question.”
Dogscar eyes her. “What.”
“If Longtail, Whitestorm, and Fireheart all had an obligation to talk to Bluestar and make sure you and Brightpaw were made warriors, what about Goldenflower or Frostfur?”
“What about them?”
“Well,” Cinderpelt says, “they’re your mothers. They could have talked to Bluestar as well, tried to make sure you got to have your ceremony alongside Cloudtail, right?”
“Sure, they could have,” Dogscar growls. “Any cat could have. We’re all Clanmates.”
“So then isn’t it every cat's fault?” Cinderpelt asks.
“I don’t know ,” Dogscar snaps. “Yes? I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Aren’t you supposed to be trying to stop me from blaming everyone around me?”
“There are no right answers. There’s just what you think,” Cinderpelt says, not unkindly. “So is that what you think? Everyone in the Clan could’ve stopped Bluestar, so everyone is at fault?”
“I don’t know anymore. I don’t...I don’t know. Goldenflower...she’s my mom .”
Cinderpelt brushes against his shoulder. “I know. It’s alright. But, let me ask you this: what if it’s no one’s fault?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? It had to happen somehow.”
“Maybe everyone was blindsided by what Bluestar did. Maybe no one knew the dogs were at Snakerocks, so no one thought there was any danger in the territory. No one thought this would happen because it’s never happened before . Nobody could have predicted this.”
“So what?” Dogscar asked.
“So maybe they were working with what they had: a leader who wasn’t quite who she used to be and some apprentices they expected to be made warriors on time, and a territory that, as far as they knew, was as safe as it always had been.” Cinderpelt stops walking. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Dogscar shakes his head and starts pacing in front of Cinderpelt, too tense to sit. “So it’s Bluestar’s fault?”
“Bluestar’s been through a lot. You know Tigerstar tried to kill her. Finding out a whole group of your own Clanmates was plotting your death does things to a cat. Any near death experience does. You should know that.”
Dogscar lashes his tail, staring at the ground. “Yeah.”
“I know this doesn’t magically fix anything,” Cinderpelt says. “I would never have even thought of bringing this up a few days ago. I think being with Sorrelkit, and time and distance, was good for you. It’s something to think about.”
“Yeah,” Dogscar agrees quietly.
Cinderpelt starts walking again. “Okay. You can think on that. I have to get some marigold—someone’s dogfight depleted my stores faster than I could replenish them—and I’m low on yarrow now.”
“You still want me with you?” Dogscar asks.
Cinderpelt glances around. “Still need a bodyguard, right? But I do have some warrior training, if you’d really rather go back to camp.”
“No. I’m fine.”
They keep walking. Dogscar stares at the ground, trying to sort out the tangle of his thoughts. He can’t quite justify Bluestar, her cold, cloudy eyes as she gave him his new name, called him this one like he was barely worthy of her time, with a cat who is struggling after facing down death. It just...it doesn’t connect. But Goldenflower...he can’t blame his mama for what happened. She loves him, and she had kits , for StarClan’s sake, she couldn’t have had the time to take care of them and keep an eye on her last kit that was plenty big enough to take care of himself.
And, well. When he puts it like that. Every cat in the Clan has a life , and it’s not as if he was close to any of the warriors before, except for Longtail. So.
He doesn’t like not having anywhere to turn, no one to pin the dogs on.
Cinderpelt speaks up. “You’re thinking about how much having no one to blame sucks.”
Dogscar almost laughs. “Yes.”
“It’s okay. It’s...well. I can’t say I understand, exactly, because my accident was laid out by Tigerstar, way back, so I always...I had that. But I can imagine.”
Dogscar is nodding along when the scent of blood hits his nose. “Hang on. What’s that?”
Cinderpelt pauses. “That smells like blood.”
Without waiting for a response she breaks into a run, and Dogscar races after her, passing her in a breath and dodging through the trees until he finds it. The rabbit.
“It’s prey!” he calls to Cinderpelt. The desperate crash of her uneven gate through the undergrowth slows somewhat, and then she appears.
“What? Why is it just...out in the open like this?”
Dogscar doesn’t answer, pushing through the forest a few paces more, where another rabbit lays. Beyond that, another. Cinderpelt hobbles after him.
“There’s cat scent on these rabbits,” she says. “ShadowClan. Tigerstar.”
“Something’s wrong,” Dogscar tells the rabbits’ bloody corpses.
Somewhere in the forest, a scream splits the air.
-0-0-0-
It’s Brindleface.
Cloudtail found her, apparently, along with Fireheart and Sandstorm.
Staring at her body, at the end of the trail of rabbits, right near the camp, Dogscar’s first thought after the buzzing blankness in his head fades is that at least it wasn’t Brightpaw. His second thought is that at least it wasn't Fernpaw or Ashpaw.
“She was killed deliberately. The end of the trail. These aren’t the marks of another animal’s attack,” Fireheart murmurs.
“That’s Tigerstar’s scent all over her,” Cloudtail snarls. “And his fur in her claws.”
Dogscar bristles. “He murdered her and left her for us to find. Why?”
“It’s a message,” Sandstorm says quietly.
“It’s a trap,” Fireheart says. “If Tigerstar just wanted us to find Brindleface he wouldn’t have bothered with the rabbit trail. This is a trail for the dogs.”
“He’s leading them right to us. Giving them a taste for cat blood by giving them Brindleface,” Cinderpelt whispers.
Cloudtail lashes his tail, trembling with violence. “He killed her to feed her to those monsters like a piece of prey. We ought to lead a patrol to ShadowClan territory now , show every single cat exactly what he’s capable of-“
“Not yet,” Fireheart said. “Not while the dogs are still out there with a trail leading straight to us. We can take the rabbits away, dump them in the river, but their blood is already here, the pack can still follow it.”
Sandstorm shakes her head. “Such a waste of prey.”
“What, were you planning to eat it?” Dogscar asks. The thought of eating any of these rabbits, carefully slaughtered to lead ThunderClan to their death, makes his stomach turn.
“We have enough prey in the forest to do without them,” Cinderpelt adds. “Let’s get Brindleface’s body back to camp, and Fireheart, I assume you’ll want a patrol to take care of the rabbits. Dogscar, with me. We have to prepare Brindleface for burial.”
“We?” Dogscar asks. “I’m not a medicine cat.”
“You know enough, and I need some help if we’re going to have a battle soon. Clans are supposed to have more than one medicine cat.”
Cloudtail and Sandstorm gently pick up Brindleface’s body and start to carry her towards camp. The rest of them follow more slowly.
“I’ll take care of the, ah, herbs for Brindleface,” Cinderpelt says softly. “You go with Cloudtail and Fernpaw and Ashpaw. They’ll need some support right now. Then we’ll go for herbs, as far from Snakerocks as we can get.”
Dogscar nods once and picks up the pace to walk beside Cloudtail as Cinderpelt veers off toward her den.
Brindleface’s body is laid in the middle of camp as every cat slowly gathers around. Out of the corner of his eye Dogscar sees flashes of white and gray, hears Fernpaw ask, “What’s going on?” and then-
“ Mom !” Ashpaw yowls, breaking through a few warriors and running forward.
Fernpaw is just a heartbeat after him, skidding to a halt in front of Brindleface. Cloudtail sits beside them, curls his tail around them and hooks his chin over Fernpaw’s head.
“There was nothing we could do,” he whispers. “She was dead when we found her. Tigerstar...Tigerstar laid a trail of rabbits for the dogs to follow and left her at the end of it to give them a taste for cat blood.”
Dogscar winces. He wouldn’t have laid it out exactly like that.
“The dogs are coming here?” Fernpaw asks. “Will we have to fight them, too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It depends what Fireheart and Bluestar decide to do.”
“I’m going to fight the dogs,” Ashpaw growled. “I’ll kill them all. And then I’ll go to ShadowClan and I’ll kill Tigerstar. Mom’s dead. She’s dead and it’s his fault.”
Dogscar pads around to Ashpaw’s other side. “Ashpaw. You know you can’t do that. The dogs are huge and we have no chance against them if we try to fight them head on. Even with all our warriors. They’re much bigger than badgers or foxes and twice as dangerous. And good warriors don’t kill other cats unless they absolutely have to.”
“Tigerstar killed my mom. He tried to kill everyone. He deserves it.”
Dogscar tips his head. “Yeah, yeah he does. But you’re better than him, right Ashpaw? You’re a better cat than he is, so you don’t kill. You follow the code.”
“I guess,” Ashpaw grumbles. “But, if I was fighting him and I did need to kill him, that would be okay?”
Dogscar isn’t even going to argue that, not with Brindleface’s bloody body in front of him and the knowledge that if he saw Tigerstar right now he would do the same thing. “Sure. If it came to that. But if you do fight Tigerstar, you’ll need backup. He’s trained his whole life to be the best warrior in the forest.”
Ashpaw nods seriously and Dogscar glances over at Cloudtail. The white warrior has Fernpaw’s face buried in the thick ruff of his fur, and his own eyes are full of tears as he stares at the cat who raised him. Dogscar brushes against Ashpaw and stands up. As he does, Cinderpelt reappears with bundles of mint and lavender in her mouth, silently nodding to Brindleface’s kits as she passes them and starting to lay the flowers out. Around her wounds first, covering the blood in purple and green, then tucked between her forepaws and in a crown around her head. Dogscar has to look away as he comes to Cloudtail’s other side.
“Cloudtail,” he says softly. “You okay?”
Cloudtail grits his teeth and looks away. “Fine. It’s not like she was my real mother or anything, right? Not like Fern or Ash.”
“Uh-huh,” Dogscar says, letting skepticism color his tone. “And that means that she couldn’t love you and you couldn’t love her, right? Not as much as they do, anyway.”
“It sounds stupid when you say it like that,” Cloudtail says with the barest hint of a wet smile.
“Lots of things sound right in your head until someone else is saying them,” Dogscar says softly. “Really, though. Are you okay?”
“My mom’s dead,” Cloudtail whispers. “Not the way she was supposed to be, either. She was supposed to live her whole life as a warrior, maybe have another litter, retire . She deserved that. Someone took that. So no, I’m not exactly okay.”
Dogscar looks at his own paws. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“What do you care, anyway?” Cloudtail asks. “It’s not like you like me.”
Dogscar refuses to be hurt by that. He hasn’t exactly been friendly with Cloudtail, before the dogs or after. But he remembers Cloudtail curling around him and breathing when he could have ignored him, probably should have ignored him. He moves a little closer so he’s pressed against Cloudtail, wraps what remains of his tail around him.
Somehow he doesn’t think breathing is quite the right solution here. “We’ll get him, Cloudtail. Him and any other cat who works with him. I promise.”
“Yeah,” Cloudtail says, low and dangerous. “He’s going to die, and when he does....I hope it’s painful.”
Before Dogscar can say anything else Cloudtail hangs his head. “That’s a terrible thing to wish on a cat, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Dogscar agrees, “but if anyone deserves it, it’s Tigerstar.”
“I just...I can’t imagine what this is like for Fern. For both if them, of course, but she just lost her mentor after he tried to murder a kit, and now this? She’s not even a warrior yet.”
Dogscar frowns. “I almost forgot Darkstripe was Fernpaw’s mentor. Did she get another one yet?”
“Yeah, yesterday, weren’t you—I guess you were with Sorrelkit, actually.” Cloudtail shakes his head. “She got Frostfur, who’s actually the only warrior left without an apprentice except Brackenfur, and he’s basically guaranteed Snowkit.”
Cloudtail nods toward the nursery. Speckletail is curled protectively around Snowkit, but Brackenfur is sitting next to him, flicking his tail so the kit can attack it.
“Dogscar?” Cinderpelt says quietly. “Fireheart is leading the attack tonight, before the dogs have time to discover the trail.”
Dogscar looks up at the just-darkening sky. “Leading an attack on the dog pack at night? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s what you did, isn’t it? Bluestar and Fireheart have a plan. If we hurry it won't be fully dark before we’re finished.”
Dogscar glances at Cloudtail and slowly follows Cinderpelt out of the camp. She picks up the pace until she’s moving as quickly as she can.
“With any luck, we won’t have many injuries, but obviously if you can prepare for a battle beforehand, it’s better. So you can go collect cobwebs and I’ll get some marigold, and that should be good enough to treat any injuries tonight.”
Before she can split and run a different direction, Dogscar says, “You should really get another medicine cat. I’m going to be a warrior again soon.”
Cinderpelt sloss to a stop. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve actually said that since the dog attack.”
Dogscar shrugs. “Where’s the marigold patch?”
Cinderpelt jerks her chin into the trees. “Farthest one from Snakerocks is a pretty straight shot that way. Get as much as you can and meet me back at camp.”
Dogscar nods once and darts off into the trees. The forest seems sick and strange in the dull twilight, with the threat of the pack at his heels and no Clanmates at his side. Every rustle in the leaves makes him slide to a stumbling halt as he glances over his shoulder, every crack of a twig makes him flinch so hard he nearly falls. With Cinderpelt, with Longtail, it’s different , he’s not alone. And with night looming the shadows are deeper and dread coils in his stomach. The pack has never had rabbit trails leading them to camp and cat blood fresh in their noses.
The marigold flowers seem unnaturally bright in the forest—it’s not even that dark yet, but it feels it. Dogscar skids to a stop and starts tearing the stems from the ground as fast as he can, until he has a bundle almost too big to fit in his mouth. Then he races back to camp, somehow feeling better with every step despite the fact that it brings him ever closer to the trap Tigerstar laid.
In camp, Cinderpelt is already in her den, checking the stores and adding another nest for wounded cats to lay in. Dogscar drops his bundle of marigold on the ground and dips his head to her before turning to find Longtail. His mentor is standing with the others as Fireheart and Bluestar explain their plan to lead the dogs to the river.
“Hey,” Dogscar whispers as he joins them.
“You’re joining the attack?” Longtail asks. “Dogscar, are you sure-“
“ Yes , I’m sure,” Dogscar says, with a touch of a growl.
“Okay.” Longtail nods, but Dogscar is still fairly certain he’s about to be protected like a kit for the rest of the night.
“Alright,” Fireheart says. “I’ll be waiting at the steepest part of the gorge. Whitestorm, Mousefur, Thornpaw, Graystripe, you’ll be at the first position, and lead the dogs to Longtail and...Dogscar, along with Cloudtail and Brightpaw. Bluestar will lead you to me. Sandstorm and Brackenfur will stay behind to help guard the nursery. Dustpelt and Frostfur will take their apprentices to Sunningrocks. Is everyone clear on their positions?”
Dogscar raises his voice with the others in the affirmative and glances at Longtail. Despite everything, adrenaline and the promise of a fight thrums in his veins already. He used to live for this. He’s ready.
“For Brindleface!” Ashpaw howls as they start to run out of camp.
Dogscar’s face splits in a grin as Fernpaw and Cloudtail add their voices to the cry, and then he joins in with the rest of the Clan as they stream into the forest to take back their home.
For Brindleface. For Brightpaw. For Cloudtail, for Ashpaw, for Fernpaw. And maybe...
Maybe for Dogscar, too.