Warriors AU: Forest of Secrets

Chapter 19

Shocked and angry caterwauls rose up from the cats surrounding the Great Rock. Every muscle in Sandstorm's body urged him to creep backward into the bushes and hide from their fury. It took all his strength to stay where he was. Fireheart pressed against his side, as shaken as he was, and he found her warmth comforting.

On top of the Great Rock, Tallstar whipped around to face Oakstar. "Is this true?" she snarled.

Oakstar did not reply to her at once. With great dignity, she stepped forward and faced Nightstar. The moonlight glowed on her fur, turning it to silver, so that Sandstorm could almost believe that a warrior of Starclan had leaped down from Silverpelt to join them. She waited until the noise from below had died down. "How do you know this?" she coolly asked Nightstar when she could make herself heard. "Have you been spying on our camp?"

"Spying!" Nightstar spat the word out. "There's no need to spy when your apprentices gossip so freely. My warriors heard this at the last Gathering. Do you dare to stand here now and tell me they are wrong?"

As he spoke, Sandstorm remembered seeing Swiftpaw with the Shadowclan apprentices at the end of the last Gathering. No wonder the young cat had looked guilty, if she had been telling her friends all about Thunderclan's prisoner, so soon after Oakstar had ordered all her Clan to keep quiet!

Oakstar hesitated. Sandstorm felt a pang of sympathy for her. Many of her own Clan had been unhappy with her decision to shelter blind Brokentail. How was she going to defend herself in front of the other Clans?

Tallstar crouched in front of her, her ears flattened. "Is it true?" she repeated.

For a moment Oakstar did not speak. Then she lifted her head defiantly. "Yes, it's true," she meowed.

"Traitor!" spat Tallstar. "You know what Brokenstar did to us."

Oakstar's tail tip twitched; even from his place below the rock Sandstorm could see the strain in every muscle of her body, and knew she was struggling to keep calm. "No cat dares to call me traitor!" she hissed.

"I dare," retorted Tallstar. "You are nothing but a traitor to the warrior code, if you are willing to give shelter to that... that heap of fox dung!"

All around the clearing Windclan cats leaped to their paws, yowling in support of their leader. "Traitor! Traitor!"

At the foot of the Great Rock, Goldenflower and Ashfoot, the Windclan deputy, faced each other with their hackles raised, lips drawn back to show their sharp teeth, their noses no more than a mouse-length apart.

Sandstorm sprang up too, his fighting instinct sending energy to his paws. He caught a glimpse of Willowpelt snarling at the Windclan queens with whom he had been sharing tongues a few moments before. A couple of Shadowclan warriors paced threateningly toward Darkstripe, and Mousefur leaped to her side, ready to attack.

"Stop!" Oakstar yowled from her place on the Great Rock. "How can you break the truce like this? Would you risk the wrath of Starclan?"

As she spoke, the moonlight began to fade. Every cat in the clearing froze. Looking up, Sandstorm saw a wisp of cloud passing over the face of the moon. He shivered. Was that a warning from Starclan, because the Clans seemed about to break the sacred truce? Clouds had covered the moon once before, a sign of Starclan's anger that had brought the Gathering to an end.

As the clouds passed away the moonlight strengthened again. The moment of crisis had passed. Most of the cats sat down, though they continued to glare at one another. Brindleface pushed himself between Ashfoot and Goldenflower, and started to mew urgently into the Thunderclan deputy's ear.