Warriors AU: The Darkest Hour

Chapter 1

Watery shafts of light sliced through the bare trees as Sandstorm carried his leader to her final resting place. With his teeth clenched firmly in her scruff, he retraced the route the dog pack had taken as the brave warriors of Thunderclan lured them to the gorge and their destruction. His whole body felt numb, and his head spun with the terrible realization that Oakstar was dead.

Without his leader, the forest itself seemed different, even stranger to Sandstorm than the day he had first ventured into it as a kittypet. Nothing was real; he felt as if the trees and rocks could dissolve like mist within a moment. A vast, unnatural silence covered everything. With the rational part of his mind Sandstorm realized that all the prey had ben scared away by the rampaging dog pack, but in the grip of his grief it seemed that even the forest was stunned into mourning for Oakstar.

The scene at the gorge replayed over and over in his head. He saw again the slavering jaws of the dog who led the pack, and felt its sharp teeth meet in his scruff. He remembered how Oakstar had appeared out of nowhere, flinging herself at the dog, driving it—and herself—over the edge of the gorge and into the river. He flinched again at the icy shock of the water as he leaped in to rescue his drowning leader, and their hopeless struggle until two Riverclan warriors, Blackclaw and Stonefur, came to help them.

Most of all, Sandstorm recalled his dismay and disbelief as he crouched beside his leader on the riverbank, and realized that she had sacrificed her last life to save him and all of Thunderclan from the dog pack.

As he bore Oakstar's body home, with the help of Blackclaw and Stonefur, he kept pausing to scent the air for fresh traces of dog, and he had already sent his friend Silverstream to scout the territory on either side of their trail, searching for signs that the dogs had caught any of the Thunderclan cats in their desperate race for the gorge. So far, to Sandstorm's relief, they had found nothing.

Now, skirting a bramble thicket, Sandstorm set down his lifeless leader once more and raised his head to drink in the air, thankful to taste only the clean scents of the forest. A moment later, Silverstream appeared around a clump of dead bracken.

"Everything's fine, Sandstorm," he reported. "Plenty of broken undergrowth, but that's all."

"Good," Sandstorm meowed. His hope rose that the dogs that had escaped the fall into the gorge had fled in terror, and the forest once again belonged to the four Clans of wild cats. His Clan had lived through three terrible moons, when they had become prey in their own territory, but they had survived. "Let's keep going. I want to check that the camp is safe before the Clan comes back."

He and the Riverclan warriors took up Oakstar's body again and carried it through the trees. At the top of the ravine that led down to the camp entrance, Sandstorm paused. He briefly remembered the early morning, when he and his warriors had followed the trail of dead rabbits that Goldenstar had laid to lure the dog pack to the Thunderclan camp. At the end of the trail they had found the body of the gentle queen Whitestorm, slaughtered to give the savage dogs a taste for cat blood. But now everything seemed peaceful, and when Sandstorm tasted the air again he could detect only cat scent coming from the camp.

"Wait here," he meowed. "I'm going to take a look."

"I'll come with you," Silverstream offered instantly.

"No." It was Stonefur who spoke, flicking out her tail to bar the silver tabby warrior's way. "I think Sandstorm needs to do this alone."

Flashing a grateful look at the Riverclan deputy, Sandstorm began picking his way down the ravine, his ears pricked for any sound of trouble ahead. But the strange silence still reigned over the forest.

As he emerged from the gorse tunnel into the clearing, Sandstorm paused to glance warily around. It was possible that one or more of the dogs had never made it to the gorge, or that Goldenstar had sent Shadowclan warriors to take over the camp. But all was quiet. Sandstorm's fur prickled with the strangeness of seeing the camp deserted like this, yet there was no sign of danger, and still no scent of dogs or Shadowclan.