The Fourth Apprentice

toward the cats, its tail whispering over the leaves. The other beavers followed, clumsy but surprisingly fast. Sedgewhisker darted forward and dealt the leader a swift blow on the nose before dancing away again.

“Great StarClan!” Toadfoot spat. “Has she no sense?”

The beavers lumbered in pursuit as Whitetail and the others slipped back into the trees, drawing them deeper into the forest. Within a few heartbeats, Lionblaze lost sight of them.

“Go!” Toadfoot hissed.

As the cats jumped up onto the dam, a claw of lightning split the sky from top to bottom, and thunder cracked above their heads. Snowdrop flinched, pressing herself to the log where she was balancing, then forced herself to her paws again and kept climbing.

“We should split up,” Petalfur panted. “Some cat should come with me and start looking for a gap where we can get inside. The rest of you can start pushing logs off the top.”

“I’ll come with you,” Toadfoot offered.

Petalfur led the way across the dam, just above the level of the pool, with Toadfoot following her. Lionblaze watched as she halted and started prodding one of the logs; then he headed for the top of the barrier. Lightning crackled out again; Lionblaze was almost deafened by the roll of thunder that followed it, and his ears kept ringing afterward. He shook his head impatiently. Then fat drops of rain began to fall, splashing on the logs and on the cats’ pelts.

“This is all we need,” Tigerheart grumbled.

“We’d have been happy about it back at the lake,” Dovepaw pointed out. “I hope it rains there, too.”

As Lionblaze scrambled over the topmost log and stood looking down at the pool, the clouds burst. Rain poured down in a hissing screen that blotted out everything except the logs beneath his paws. His pelt was drenched within heartbeats; he shivered as the cold rain reached his skin.

“Okay,” he yowled, raising his voice to be heard above the drumming of the raindrops. “See if you can loosen some of these logs and branches. Push them down into the streambed.”

He grabbed a long, thin branch in his jaws and hurled it down, then bent his head to grapple with a bigger log. Jigsaw pushed at it from the other end; it rolled slowly to the edge and landed in the stream with a satisfying crash.

“Yes!” Jigsaw yowled.

Farther along the dam Tigerheart and Snowdrop were struggling with a tree trunk, while Seville was showering down twigs and smaller branches into the streambed. Dovepaw was crouched close to Lionblaze, her eyes closed; he guessed she was sending out her senses to find out what the beavers were doing.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Dovepaw blinked up at him through the driving rain. “Fine,” she replied. “Whitetail and the others are keeping the beavers busy.”

Lionblaze twitched his ears. “Good. Now come help me with this log. Otherwise every cat will start wondering what you’re doing.”

Dovepaw glared at him; Lionblaze knew how she felt about keeping her powers a secret, but he didn’t see what else they could do. Slipping on the wet logs, she struggled to his side and put her shoulder to the log he was trying to shift. Lionblaze thrust hard at it and felt it start to move, rolling faster and faster until it tipped over the edge and fell into the stream.

“Well done!” Lionblaze panted. “We-”

He broke off as the terrified screech of a cat cut through the hiss of the rain. A couple of tail-lengths farther along the dam, Lionblaze spotted Tigerheart’s paws skid from under him; the young warrior went plummeting down toward the stream, landing with a splash where rain was pooling on the stony bed.

Before Lionblaze could find a way to help him, he made out movement down below and Tigerheart appeared, clawing his way determinedly up the stack of logs. His mud-soaked fur stuck out in spikes, but his eyes gleamed with determination.

“Are you okay?” Lionblaze called out.

“No, I’m furious!” Tigerheart hauled himself onto the top of the dam. “I’d like to turn every one of those beavers into fresh-kill.”

“He’s okay,” Dovepaw murmured.

Lionblaze waved his tail at the ShadowClan cat, then began testing which of the logs around him could be dislodged next. They all seemed to be stuck fast, bound together with mud and twigs.

Then he heard Petalfur calling from farther down the mound. “Hey, we need some help down here!”

Heading toward the sound of the she-cat’s voice, Lionblaze was joined by the three kittypets. Their fur was plastered to their bodies and their eyes were wild with fear. But they didn’t hesitate, scrambling across the logs to answer Petalfur’s call.

I’ll never feel the same about kittypets after tonight, Lionblaze thought.

Petalfur and Toadfoot were clinging to the dam two or three tail-lengths above the pool. Rain stippled the surface while black water sucked at the lowest logs. A dark hole gaped in the mound beside Toadfoot and Petalfur, with a huge tree trunk poking out of it. “We pulled out some of the mud and twigs,” Petalfur explained. “If we can shift that trunk, I think a lot of the dam will go with it.”

“Okay, let’s try,” Lionblaze meowed.

Glancing around, he saw that Dovepaw and Tigerheart had also clambered down to join them. “Dovepaw, you’re the smallest,” he called. “Can you go right inside and push from there?”

Dovepaw gave him a tense nod and vanished into the hole. The rest of the cats lined up against the tree trunk and started to push. At first Lionblaze couldn’t feel it move at all.

“Harder!” he yowled. “Jigsaw, push more from your end! Toadfoot, can you wriggle underneath and pull out more of the mud?”

Gradually, as all the cats struggled and panted, the tree trunk began to shift. The outer end swung around; Lionblaze heard a crunching sound from inside the dam.

“Dovepaw, get out!” he screeched.

The apprentice popped out into the open again as more mud poured down into the hole, which quickly closed up. The tree swung further, tearing several more logs along with it, then ripped free and tumbled down the slope. Jigsaw was knocked off his paws as it slid past him; Snowdrop fastened her teeth in his shoulder and hauled him upright again. Tigerheart flung himself flat and the tree trunk bounced right over him, skimming his bristling fur. Lionblaze suddenly realized that the log under his paws was moving. He looked around for a solid place to jump to, but there was no time. As the log where he had been standing fell into the pool, he dug the claws of one paw into another branch and hung there, dangling in the air, with water lapping against his tail.

The pool was pushing hungrily at the dam. Lionblaze clawed his way onto a bigger log, feeling it shift under his weight. The whole structure was starting to shiver.

“Pull out those twigs!” Petalfur ordered Seville, gesturing with her tail. “Tigerheart, scoop the mud out of that hole. Toadfoot, you and Jigsaw help me roll this log down.”

Lionblaze took a gulping breath. How does Petalfur know what the water is going to do? He started to claw out pawfuls of twigs, realizing as he did that the level of water in the pool was rising-or was the dam sinking into it? A wave lapped over his head, leaving him spluttering; he caught a glimpse of Dovepaw and Snowdrop, working side by side, under the level of the trapped water.

We’ve got to work faster! he thought as Dovepaw popped her head up to take a breath. His legs ached as he forced them to tear at the branches and kick the debris away behind him as he worked. Suddenly he realized that Dovepaw was beside him again, water streaming from her pelt.

“The beavers!” she gasped. “They’re coming back!” A heartbeat later, Lionblaze heard terrified yowling; Whitetail, Sedgewhisker, and Woody dashed onto the top of the broken dam. Peering through the rain, Lionblaze made out the bulky, menacing shapes of the beavers just behind them.

“Quick!” he screeched. “Pull the logs out!” Every cat was tearing and scrabbling at the branches, but they were too tightly woven. Fury surged up in Lionblaze as he realized that they were going to fail, only because their time was running out.

Then he heard a rumbling sound coming from farther upstream. The dam began to shake.

“Flood!” Toadfoot shrieked. “Coming straight at us!”

Lionblaze whipped around, almost losing his footing on the unsteady logs, and saw a surge of water traveling