Squirrelflight suspected the grey tomcat was right, but that didn’t mean she was willing to let Brambleclaw get away with insulting her father. She forced her neck fur to flatten again, but she still quivered with fury as they set off towards the ThunderClan camp.
“Firestar will always want to help Onestar.” She addressed the back of Brambleclaw’s head as he slipped through a patch of ferns ahead of her. “They’ve been friends forever.”
“Maybe, but Onestar clearly doesn’t need his help any more,” Brambleclaw mewed without looking back. The certainty in his tone infuriated Squirrelflight all over again. “It’s natural for Clans to be rivals. We were right to help WindClan when they were in trouble, but we can’t keep on looking out for them.”
“Stupid furball!” Squirrelflight growled, not loud enough for Brambleclaw to hear her. She hated the way the Clans had separated like flowing water into their new territories; what had happened to their closeness during the journey from the forest, when every cat had tried to help each other without stopping to remember which Clan they belonged to? It felt much too soon to turn their backs on that and let hostility and Clan rivalry take over. How would they survive in this new and unfamiliar place if they couldn’t rely on each other?
“And what will happen if ThunderClan need WindClan’s help?” Rainwhisker meowed ominously, as if he had followed Squirrelflight’s thoughts. “Have any of you thought of that?”
Brambleclaw led the patrol home by a different route, hunting on the way to take fresh-kill back for the Clan. Pausing underneath an oak tree, Squirrelflight once again picked up the scent of badger. It was stronger this time, and fresh; she guessed that it was not long since the creature had passed that way.
“Brambleclaw, do you smell that too?”
The tabby warrior padded up with a squirrel he had just caught. He put the fresh-kill down and swiped his tongue around his jaws before drawing in a stream of air. Alarm flared at once in his amber eyes. “Badger! Close by, too.”
Squirrelflight’s pelt prickled. A badger in their territory was the last thing any cat wanted. Hawkfrost had already driven one away from RiverClan, and it looked like ThunderClan had been lucky not to encounter one before now. “We’ll have to do something,” she mewed.
Brambleclaw nodded. A badger would make a tasty meal of a young kit if it had the chance. They were unlikely to prey on an adult cat, but that didn’t mean full-grown warriors were safe if they met one. A badger would kill out of pure savagery, trampling its prey into the ground or clamping it in its jaws and never letting go until its victim was dead.
Squirrelflight reminded herself that not all badgers were like that. Her first journey from the forest had led her to Midnight, the wise badger who lived at the sun-drown-place. Midnight had warned them that Twolegs would destroy the forest, and told them that the Clans would have to leave. But Midnight was unique; the rest of her kin could be bloodthirsty marauders if the mood took them.
“Is there a problem?” Ashfur came to join Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw; his words were indistinct because he carried a mouthful of mice, dangling by their tails.
Brambleclaw beckoned with his tail to Rainwhisker, who had just brought down a blackbird; the young warrior came trotting over with a satisfied look on his face and a feather on his nose.
“A badger—maybe more than one—has been here,” Brambleclaw meowed. “We can’t go back to camp without checking it out.”
“You mean, follow the trail?” Rainwhisker mewed in alarm. “Are you sure?”
“We have to find out if it’s left our territory. Squirrelflight, can you tell which way it went?”
Squirrelflight nosed at the scent the badger had left in the grass. “That way.” She pointed with her tail.
Brambleclaw padded over to sniff the trail. “Keep quiet, all of you. I don’t want them to know we’re here until we see how many there are and decide what’s best to do. We’re lucky that the wind’s in the right direction, so it won’t carry our scent to them.”
The cats left their prey among the roots of the oak tree, scratching earth over the pile until they could come and collect it later. Then with Brambleclaw in the lead, they set out after the badger.
The trail led them deeper into the forest, in the direction of the ShadowClan border. Here and there were freshly turned patches of earth, as if the badger had been digging for grubs. Squirrelflight felt a pang of concern for her friend Tawnypelt and the rest of ShadowClan; if they failed to track the badger down in their territory, some cat would need to warn Blackstar.
The scent grew steadily stronger, a powerful reek that swallowed up all other scents of the forest. Squirrelflight felt her fur stand up along her spine. It looked as if ShadowClan would be safe after all; the badger was still close by.
Suddenly Brambleclaw halted in the shadow of a boulder and held up his tail as a sign for the others to stay back. He clawed his way silently up the rough stone until he could poke his head above it and see to the other side.
Instantly he ducked down again. Squirrelflight crept forward until she could peer around the side of the boulder.
The ground on the other side was flat and pebbly, leading to a scattering of more smooth grey boulders. Between two of the rocks there was a gaping hole flanked by piles of freshly dug earth; Squirrelflight almost sneezed as a harsh scent reached her from the damp soil, a mingled reek of badger and fox. The badger must be building a set in an old fox den, she thought.
In front of the hole, three badger cubs scuffled about, making high-pitched fretful noises as if they didn’t like having to trek through the forest in daylight. Squirrelflight stared, her neck fur rising in horror, then she slid back to join Ashfur and Rainwhisker in the shelter of the rock.
“There’s a whole family of them!” she hissed. “Great StarClan, they’ll be all over the territory in a couple of seasons!”
Ashfur looked puzzled. “It’s unusual for a badger to move with cubs.”
“Maybe they were forced out of their old home,” Rainwhisker suggested.
Brambleclaw slid down from the top of the boulder and crouched beside them. “We can’t do anything until we know how many adults there are,” he meowed. “We’ll stay here and keep watch. Don’t do anything unless I say so, OK?”
All three cats nodded, though Squirrelflight seethed at the way Brambleclaw was ordering them about like wet-eared apprentices.
“Badgers mostly come out at night,” Brambleclaw went on. “If they’re in the set now, there’s not much we can do. No cat is going in there.” His amber gaze rested on Squirrelflight.
“I’m not stupid!” she hissed.
“I didn’t say you were,” Brambleclaw retorted. “But there are times when you do stupid things.”
Ashfur took a breath as if he were going to leap to her defence, but she flicked her tail at him for silence. “Really, it’s not worth it,” she muttered.
“If we find there’s just one fully-grown badger with the cubs, we’ll attack,” Brambleclaw mewed. “We can’t let them settle in our territory. Four of us should be able to cope with one badger. Hawkfrost managed to drive one off, after all. This could even be the same badger.”
Squirrelflight’s neck fur began to rise again at the mention of Brambleclaw’s half-brother. It was bad enough that Brambleclaw refused to admit that Hawkfrost was untrustworthy, without having him held up as a model of courage and fighting skill as well.
“We might drive it into ShadowClan territory,” she pointed out.
“Then