The Fourth Apprentice

CHAPTER 22

Lionblaze jumped up onto the bank of the stream and turned to look back down at his ragged patrol. Seville, Snowdrop, and Jigsaw were standing with their mouths wide open as they stared up at the dam.

“That’s seriously huge!” Jigsaw breathed.

Snowdrop blinked at Lionblaze. “You really think we can move that?”

Lionblaze nodded, trying to hide his own doubts and give the kittypets confidence. “With all of us working together, yes, I do.”

“Come on,” Dovepaw urged them, leaping up to stand beside Lionblaze. “Let’s go find the others.”

Lionblaze led the way up the slope and into the clearing where he had left the other Clan cats. Pushing through the undergrowth into the open, he halted, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of a pile of logs in the middle of the clearing. Sedgewhisker was just heaving a branch onto the top of the stack, before leaping lightly down.

“Hi, you’re back,” she panted.

“I figured if we could stack branches, we could work out how to pull them apart,” Toadfoot explained, padding over to meet Lionblaze. His pelt was covered with scraps of twig and bark and he was breathing hard.

“Good idea,” Lionblaze meowed admiringly. “You’re doing a great job.”

At the opposite side of the clearing Petalfur was dragging a branch that was far, far bigger than she was. She didn’t stop until she reached the stack of logs and pushed her branch up to the foot of it. Then she limped wearily across the clearing to join Lionblaze and the others; her eyes as she gazed at the new arrivals were old and full of determination.

As Tigerheart and Whitetail trotted up with Woody, Lionblaze began to introduce the kittypets.

“I’m not a Clan cat,” Woody explained. “I’m just passing through.”

“I think I’ve seen you before, in the woods,” Seville meowed; he looked relieved to meet a cat who was even slightly familiar.

“We’ve got to discuss the plan,” Toadfoot announced as soon as the introductions were over. “We need to decide-”

“Hunt first,” Whitetail interrupted with a flick of her tail. “We can’t do this if we don’t eat and rest for a bit.”

Toadfoot looked briefly offended at being contradicted, then gave the WindClan she-cat a nod. “Okay,” he agreed. “But we’d better be quick about it.”

To Lionblaze’s relief, there was still plenty of prey in the woods, and it wasn’t long before the cats had gathered in the clearing again, crouching to eat their catch.

“We’ve already eaten, thanks,” Seville mewed when Whitetail offered him a mouse.

Snowdrop drew back, her green eyes wide with horror, but Jigsaw looked cautiously interested, and he leaned over to sniff the squirrel Dovepaw had caught.

“Go on, take a bite,” she encouraged him.

Jigsaw hesitated, then buried his teeth in the squirrel and tore off a mouthful.

“What do you think?” Dovepaw asked as he gulped it down.

“Er…not bad,” the tabby tom replied. “Just a bit…fluffy.” Night was falling by the time the cats had finished eating. The moon shone fitfully from behind drifting banks of cloud, and the air felt damp and heavy.

“I think Whitetail and Sedgewhisker should be the ones to lure the beavers away,” Lionblaze began as the rest of the cats clustered around him beneath the trees.

“Why?” The tip of Whitetail’s tail twitched. “We’re not scared to work on the dam.” Sedgewhisker nodded.

“Because WindClan cats are the fastest runners,” Toadfoot replied. “We all have to do what we’re best at.”

“Oh…okay.” Whitetail looked satisfied.

“I’ll come with you,” Woody meowed. “I know these woods. We’ll start off from the beavers’ lodge, and then go this way…” Picking up a twig in his jaws, he traced a line in the leaf-mold to represent the stream, and then a winding route through the trees. “There’s plenty of cover; they’ll have no idea what’s happening back at the dam,” he added, dropping the twig.

“That’s great, Woody,” Lionblaze told him.

“We’ll distract the beavers for as long as we possibly can,” Whitetail mewed.

“And if they do decide to come back, I’ll run ahead and warn you,” Sedgewhisker added.

Lionblaze nodded, with a sideways glance at Dovepaw. She can use her senses to track the beavers, too.

“So what about the dam?” Tigerheart prompted. “Once the beavers are out of the way-what then?”

“We’d be better off tackling it from the other side,” Lionblaze meowed. “That way we’ll be even farther from the beavers.”

“That’s a good idea,” Petalfur agreed. “And I’ve been thinking. Look at this.” She pointed with her paw to a small pile of twigs. “It’s easiest to knock the top logs off the dam”-she demonstrated by swiping at the topmost twig with a claw-“but if we can somehow get inside and shift the logs farther down, then the whole thing might collapse.” Delicately she removed a twig from the middle of her pile, and the heap crumbled, sending twigs rolling down the slope. “The weight of water would crush it.”

“Brilliant!” Tigerheart exclaimed.

“Hang on a moment.” Seville, the orange kittypet, spoke up. “You want us to go inside the dam and collapse it…and we would still be inside it, yes?”

Lionblaze nodded. “It’s risky, but it looks like it’s the only way.” He hesitated, gazing around at the worried faces of his friends. “We’ll just have to see what it’s like when we get there,” he ended with a shrug.

With a last glance at their companions, Whitetail, Sedgewhisker, and Woody headed upstream toward the lodge, while Lionblaze led the rest of the cats across the stream below the dam to the bank on the opposite side. Farther up the slope, they could see the Twoleg pelt-dens glowing with light and echoing with murmuring voices.

“What about them?” Toadfoot asked, flicking his tail in the direction of the pelt-dens.

Lionblaze paused at the bottom of the dam. “There’s nothing we can do about them,” he replied at last. “We don’t have enough cats to distract them. We’ll just have to hope that they don’t cause any trouble.”

“Hope’s the easy part,” Toadfoot responded caustically.

Lionblaze’s pelt prickled with tension as he waited for the signal from Whitetail. He could tell that the other cats felt the same. Dovepaw was scraping at the ground with the tips of her claws, while Tigerheart’s tail twitched back and forth. All three kittypets looked terrified, their eyes wide and their ears laid back.

Come on, Whitetail, Lionblaze urged. Get a move on, before one of us starts to panic.

“Remember,” he mewed aloud. “No cat is to fight. If the beavers come back and challenge you, don’t try to be a hero. We’ve learned that lesson the hard way.”

“Right,” Toadfoot agreed. “If the beavers attack, run. Climb a tree. I don’t think they can-”

A piercing yowl from across the stream interrupted him.

“Something’s happening,” Lionblaze murmured, with a glance at Dovepaw.

She nodded. “The beavers are moving inside their den,” she whispered, so faintly that no other cat could hear.

Lionblaze peered upstream toward the lodge. At first the night was so black that he could see nothing. Then the moon drifted out from behind a cloud, and he spotted movement beside the mound of sticks. The beavers’ heads broke the surface of the pool and they scrambled up onto the outside of the lodge, their bodies swarming over the logs like bulky shadows.

On the bank, Lionblaze made out Whitetail’s pale pelt, with Woody and Sedgewhisker dark shadows beside her. He could just hear their mocking hisses, taunting the beavers to draw them off their den and away from the pool. One of the beavers grunted, then waddled down the hill of sticks and onto the bank. It started bustling