The Fourth Apprentice by Erin Hunter

Author:Erin Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Lionblaze heard panic in his apprentice’s wail and saw the fear in her eyes. Quietly he padded over to her and rested his tail on her shoulders. “Calm down,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay.”

Rippletail was looking around. “Water doesn’t run uphill,” the RiverClan cat meowed, “so the stream must be somewhere over there.” He pointed with his tail to a line of long grass at the bottom of a green slope.

“Let’s check it out,” Toadfoot suggested.

He let Rippletail take the lead as the cats trotted in single file alongside the silver fence. Before they had covered many fox-lengths, Lionblaze heard loud Twoleg voices coming from the other side of the field. A group of Twoleg kits erupted into the open, shouting noisily and kicking what looked like a smooth, round boulder with their hind paws.

“Hurry!” he called to his companions as the young Twolegs ran across the grass toward them.

Every cat picked up the pace until they were racing with their tails streaming out. Lionblaze felt the ground shake under his paws as the young Twolegs came nearer, still yowling and kicking the boulder-thing back and forth between them. With a gasp of relief he plunged into the cover of the long grass at the bottom of the slope, but his gasp changed to a screech of alarm as the ground gave way under his paws. He rolled and bumped down a shallow cliff, paws and tail thrashing, and landed with a thump on hard, pebble-strewn earth.

“It’s the stream!” Petalfur mewed.

Dazed, Lionblaze sat up and looked around. He was back in the dry streambed, with overhanging grasses almost meeting above his head. His companions were scattered beside him, picking themselves up and examining scraped pads and snagged fur.

“I’ve swallowed every piece of the grit in this stream!” Tigerheart complained, spitting.

“No, you haven’t,” Toadfoot growled, giving his pelt a shake. “It’s all over my fur!”

Lionblaze spotted Dovepaw crouching beside a jutting rock, her eyes glazed with fear. “I should have heard the Twolegs coming!” she whispered. “I should have known what was going to happen and warned you.”

Lionblaze glanced over his shoulder at the other cats, who were getting ready to move off again. “Dovepaw has some gravel in her pad,” he called. “We need to lick it out; we’ll be with you in a couple of heartbeats.”

Then he leaned over Dovepaw so that no other cat could hear what he was saying. “You’re not responsible for all of us. You’re on this mission because you were the first to sense the brown animals blocking the stream, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t hear and see things and protect ourselves.”

Dovepaw blinked up at him unhappily. “I hate it here, so close to the Twolegplace,” she murmured. “It’s too much—all the sounds and scents and images in my head. I can’t cope with it! I can only concentrate on what is close by.” Her eyes widened into huge pools of misery. “It’s like being blind!”

Lionblaze bent his head and touched his nose to her ear in a gesture of comfort.

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