by Erin Hunter
“My name’s Thorn. And Skip—don’t worry. Our new Starleaf has great abilities, and he’ll be able to tell straight away if Spider has broken the Code.” He hoped the lie didn’t show in his face. Mud might not be the Starleaf. Mud might even be dead.
“Baboon justice? Good, good. That sounds good.” Skip was nodding vigorously, and Thorn had the feeling he was secretly relieved to have the job taken out of his paws. The big meerkat turned and strutted away, tail high, and his mob fell in behind him, jabbering their approval of their leader.
“Justice, yes, good! Good!”
“Skip wins again! Noble Skip! Hurray!”
“Come on, Spider,” muttered Thorn. “Let’s get you out of here.” But at that moment, one of the last meerkats turned back, glaring.
“Hey, weirdo. You forgot your thing.”
With her tiny paws, she scooted an object to the sand at their paws; it rolled and clunked against a stone. Spider snatched it up, but not before Thorn had made out what it was: a polished, translucent lump of white rock.
Spider hurried away ahead of Thorn, clutching the stone to his chest. “Spider really didn’t kill Skitter, you know,” he said plaintively. “I didn’t.”
“I believe you.” Thorn smiled wryly at Spider’s hastily retreating rump. “Honestly, you don’t have to convince me.”
The baboon half turned his head and muttered, “Spider was only trying to be his friend.”
“All right,” sighed Thorn. “Wait, what?”
“He’d have made a nice friend,” said Spider, nodding as Thorn caught up and walked at his side. “A little scared at first, but I soon put him at his ease and he hardly tried to run away at all. See, Spider can even speak like a meerkat.” He peeled back his muzzle and erupted into a chattering babble of nonsense. “Killer! Ooh, cozy burrow! Bugs, bugs, bugs!”
“Why couldn’t you just make friends with other baboons?” asked Thorn, amused. Spider did sound just like a meerkat. “It would be easier, you know.”
“Why would I do that?” Spider shrugged.
“Because, uh . . . you’re a baboon?”
“I suppose I am. But Spider likes meerkats. I would never kill a meerkat. It’s like I said, I prefer locusts.”
Spider was making Thorn’s head spin, so he shook it hard. “Where’s your troop?” he asked kindly.
“Spider doesn’t have a troop. I’m on my own. I like it that way.”
“Except you were trying to make friends with a meerkat.” Thorn hesitated. “Are you sure you didn’t kill him? Maybe by accident?”
Spider shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no. Spider wasn’t anywhere near Skitter. Oh, here’s another of my friends, and I wouldn’t kill him either. Hello there, Choot-Choot.”
An oxpecker flapped down, landed on the baboon’s scabby neck, and began to peck busily for parasites. It kept one wary, white-rimmed eye on Thorn as it hunted, but it seemed quite at home on Spider’s hide, and the baboon whistled and trilled to it. He wasn’t speaking Skytongue; Thorn was all too aware of that. Spider was just mimicking the bird’s calls, and doing it unnervingly well.
“Spider hasn’t met another baboon in a long time,” Spider said at last, when he seemed to tire of his meaningless conversation with the oxpecker. “Glad to meet you, Thorn, I’m sure.”
“But where were you born?” asked Thorn, bewildered. “You must have had a troop once.”
“Spider doesn’t remember.” He shrugged.
“So who named you?” Thorn pressed him.
“Spider chose Spider all by himself. Because he had a spider-friend. Used to spin webs over my fingers at night. Mm-hm. I liked her.”
Thorn shot a sidelong glance at his new companion. That meerkat hadn’t been far wrong when she called him weirdo. “The afternoon’s getting late, Spider. The sun will start going down soon, and I can’t see much shelter apart from that place.” He pointed at a clump of trees ahead. “We should make camp there before dusk starts to fall.”
“That would be fine, Thorn-friend.”
At least, he thought, meeting and rescuing Spider had made the time pass faster; Thorn had barely registered the trek over the last stretch of dry grassland, and it was good to see proper green woodland once more. “Maybe there’s water among the trees.”
“Mm-hm. Water might be good.”
Yet as they crept into the shadowy and moist undergrowth and followed the trickling sounds of a spring, Spider didn’t seem remotely excited. Light shimmered on a rippling green pool, and Thorn fell on it and drank greedily, but Spider hung back, playing idly with his stone.
Thorn rubbed the wet fur around his mouth. “What is that thing?”
“Spider will show you.” For the first time, the baboon’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm.
He scrabbled in the undergrowth with his paws, gathering dead leaves into a pile, picking out the freshest ones, and tossing them away. Experimentally patting the ones that remained, listening to them crunch and crackle, he nodded with satisfaction.
“Look, Thorn-friend.” Spider peered up into the branches. It was a small copse, and the canopy wasn’t thick; strong beams of slanting sunlight pierced the branches and dappled the forest floor. Fastidiously, Spider lifted his stone and lined it up with one brilliant ray, adjusting it until it sparkled so intensely, Thorn had to shield his eyes.
“Now, you see?” Spider angled the stone a little more. The late sunlight streamed through it, focused to a single, dazzling beam on the pile of dry leaves.
“I don’t see anything,” complained Thorn. “It’s pretty enough, but it’s giving me a headache.”
“Thorn must wait,” scolded Spider.
Thorn sighed. Spider was absolutely motionless now, and he didn’t look likely to stir anytime soon. Thorn slumped back against a pine trunk and wriggled to make himself comfortable, his eyelids drooping.
“There!”
“What?” Thorn started, wide awake. He felt his jaw slacken. Spider still stood there, the stone held steady in its focused ray of light, but he was grinning. Wisps of dense mist were rising from the leaves. In the silence, Thorn heard a faint, whispering crackle.
“Spider.” Every muscle in his body tensed. This thing, this mist, this noise: Thorn wasn’t familiar with it, but it was bad. He knew it in his bones. “What’s that?”
“Smoke,” said Spider. “It’s a kind of fog, like you see on the mountaintops in the morning. Spider thinks it’s pretty.”
“Yes, but can you stop now?”
“No, no, it gets better. Spider promises!”
Despite his uneasiness, Thorn was fascinated. He leaned closer to the leaves, edging his paws forward. He drew back his upper lip and sniffed. “It looks a bit . . . dangerous . . .”
“No, not dangerous. Keep looking.” Spider stared at the leaves with eagerness.
The pop was so sudden, Thorn tumbled back. Something bright bloomed in the smoke, a dancing leaf of pure orange light. As he stared, terrified, the leaf grew faster than any plant he’d ever seen, rising and blossoming into a blade of hot yellow.
“Stop!” he cried.
“Pretty!” shouted Spider.
A hot breeze gusted through the glade, and the dead leaves glowed violent orange; the living one sparked and grew, and yet more leaves of light erupted around it. They danced in the smoldering smoke, spreading and swelling.
“That is a beautiful and special plant,” declared Spider proudly. “It lives in dead things. Also sometimes living things.”
“Kill it.” Thorn leaped to his paws, feeling his fur rise and prickle as if his whole hide was trying to jump off him. “Kill it!”
Spider gave him a puzzled look. Then he shrugged, crouched, and cupped his forepaws around the shining light-leaves.
They sputtered, flickered, and finally died. As tendrils of smoke curled around Spider’s fingers, he gently drew them away and raised his palms to Thorn: the hairless flesh was reddened and swollen and beginning to blister. His heart thunderi
ng, Thorn sucked in a horrified breath.
But Spider’s face was filled with innocent excitement, and he smiled.
“Fire!”
CHAPTER 12
“I want to tell you about Thorn Highleaf,” rumbled Fearless, sadly. “But I hardly know where to start. He was my friend for so long, Keen.”
“I wish I could pretend to understand.” Keen gazed at Fearless, his golden eyes soft. “But I do know how important my friends are to me, so I can guess.”
“He used to ride on my back when I was patrolling Tall Trees,” Fearless went on, barely listening. “And when he hunted, he’d try to bring back as much flesh as he could and save it for me. And he tried to teach me how to climb trees, and he didn’t even laugh when I fell out of them. And he was so kind, always covering for our friend Mud, because Mud was weaker. And . . .”
“Fearless,” said Keen, clearing his throat, “it’s getting late. Don’t you think we should be getting back to the pride?”
Fearless, about to tell him a long story about Thorn and a wayward jackal, paused and eyed his friend. Keen looked a little uncomfortable and out of place, lying here among the scrub and tree trunks as baboons settled in the branches overhead for the night.
Fearless swallowed. Of course Keen wouldn’t understand; he hadn’t known any of these baboons. He probably wondered why Fearless was making such a fuss. “I . . . can’t, Keen, not yet. I have one more thing to do before I go back.”
“With the baboons?” Keen’s voice sounded strained. “They’re all going to sleep, Fearless.”
“No, it’s not that. I agreed to meet Ruthless before sunset. I left a signal.”
Keen nodded. “All right. I’ll come too.”
Fearless hesitated, licking his jaws. “You don’t have to come.”
“Fearless, I just want to help. I know you’re unhappy, because of Thorn. Let me come with you. I won’t interfere.” The young lion nudged Fearless gently with his head. “I’m learning a lot about you today, my friend. And I want to help you as much as Thorn always did.”
Fearless gave a fond rumble in his throat. Keen does understand, as much as he can. “All right. Thanks, Keen, I appreciate it.”
The plains were shadowed by the onset of night, a blue twilight settling across grass and sky and turning every feature of the landscape to gray silhouette. A glowing line of orange and pink lay on the western horizon, but it was fading fast as the two lions padded toward the distant kopje. The rocks rose black against the emerging stars, looking far more forbidding than they did in daylight, and for a moment Fearless felt a qualm of uncertainty. What if Ruthless wasn’t there? The cub had already told Fearless it was growing much harder to sneak away from Titanpride.
But as he and Keen sprang up onto the lower rocks and climbed higher, Fearless caught sight of the young lion. He was no more than a dark shape, standing very still just outside the cavern entrance.
“Ruthless,” growled Fearless softly. He loped eagerly up onto the small, bone-strewn plateau.
The cub didn’t immediately rush to meet him; he stared at Keen and Fearless, trembling where he stood.
As Fearless took a hesitant pace forward, he realized why and gasped in shock. He stopped.
This was wrong, very wrong. The cub’s fur was torn at the shoulder and at the rump; in the moonlight Fearless could see dark blood dribbling from the wounds. Ruthless’s foreleg was bleeding badly, and as he tried to take a pace toward Fearless, he lurched and stumbled.
“Fearless!” he grunted, his voice scratchy with panic. “They’re here! Run!”
Instantly dark shapes bounded from the den mouth, surrounding Ruthless. Four huge, fully grown lions paced forward, their savage teeth gleaming, their eyes glowing with hate.
Fearless froze, staring from Ruthless to his captors in disbelief and horror. Behind him, he heard Keen give a high, frightened snarl.
One of the adult males stalked forward, shaking his mane. A few lion-lengths from Fearless he halted, slaver dripping from his exposed fangs. “Fearless Treasonpride,” he growled. “Well, well.”
“Resolute,” roared Fearless, recognizing Titan’s burly lieutenant. “Let Ruthless go!”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” growled Resolute. “We know what this brat has been up to, sneaking off to meet with a traitor. That makes him a betrayer of Titanpride, too. He’ll pay the price. Just as you will.”
“Let him go, or Great Spirit help me, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Resolute’s snarl was silky and menacing. He lifted a forepaw and placed it forward, the claws popping out of their sheaths. “Come, then, cub. If you want your friend, come and take him.”
“Fearless, no.” Keen’s warning growl was right at his ear. “That would be suicide. They want you to attack.”
Breathing hard, Fearless stared at Resolute and his three huge comrades. He and Keen were so much smaller . . . and Ruthless was badly hurt . . . but if Fearless made a sudden spring, feinted, and lunged at Resolute’s leg, he might—
“Fearless!” cried Ruthless, his voice trembling but determined. “Get away from here!”
“Shut up, you.” Resolute turned and lashed a paw across the cub’s face.
Ruthless shook himself violently and gave an angry snarl. “Go! I’ll take my punishment.”
“Indeed.” Resolute reared up on his hind legs and slammed his forepaws against Ruthless’s shoulder, nearly knocking him to the ground. “I’m looking forward to that, brat.”
Ruthless staggered and yowled in fear and rage. “Don’t give them what they want, Fearless. Go!”
Fearless shuddered with helpless fury. All he wanted was to leap at Resolute and tear that sadistic smirk from his muzzle, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t help his friend, or punish his brutal captors. I’m not grown enough. They’d kill me.
“I’ll see you later, Fearless Treasonpride,” called Resolute, turning away and shoving Ruthless into a lurching walk. “You can be sure of it.”
The other three Titanpride lions followed Resolute and Ruthless, jumping away down the rocks of the kopje, their tails flicking contemptuously as they vanished. Fearless gave a strangled roar of frustration, then bounded to the edge of the drop and looked down.
He could make them out below, four massive males with rippling manes. Between them Ruthless was a far smaller figure, hemmed in by their powerful bodies as he limped toward his fate. Fearless stood motionless and watched them pad away, far across the plain, until their shadows were swallowed in the darkness.
“I was a coward,” he roared. “I should have stopped them.”
A little distance away, Rough raised her head, gazing at him with mild surprise and flicking her ears. Realizing there were no enemies in sight, she sank down again into the grass with her cubs.
“Fearless,” murmured Keen. “Keep your voice down. And don’t torment yourself about this. Ruthless knew the risks.”
Fearless glowered at the ground, his head on his forepaws. “I could have rescued him,” he snarled. “I could at least have tried.”
“No, Fearless, you couldn’t.” Keen licked his ear. “You’d have met your death. You’re the bravest lion I know, but that would just have been stupid.”
“So I’m a clever coward.”
“You’re not a coward,” said Keen patiently. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“Fine. But there was Thorn, too. I could at least have done something for Thorn.” Fearless felt a stab of guilt and grief in his chest. “I might not be able to fight grown lions, but I could have taken on a bunch of baboons.”
“You didn’t know,” insisted Keen softly. “How could you have defended Thorn when you didn’t know the battle was happening? You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault.”
“But what if they—” Fearless stopped, turning his head at the sound of approaching pawsteps.
Mighty’s powerful shape loomed out of the darkness, Valor at his flank. Behind them wal
ked the rest of the pride, their movements slow and content, their tails flicking idly. Even from where he lay, Fearless could make out the roundness of their bellies.
“That was a good hunt.” Hardy slumped down onto the grass beside Rough and dumped a rack of rib-flesh beside her. “I don’t think I could eat for a moon.”
“The size of that eland!” exclaimed Tough. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mighty bring down a bull elephant.”
Fearless opened his mouth to snap something derogatory, but Mighty beat him to it. “Oh, don’t go on about it,” he rumbled modestly. “It’s just what lions do, isn’t it? It wasn’t a big deal.”
He stalked closer, and for a horrible moment Fearless thought the bigger lion was going to lunge for him, tear out his throat, and take over the pride on the spot. But the tang of warm blood filled his nostrils as Mighty dropped a chunk of eland-flesh at his nose.
The big lion dipped his head respectfully. “For our pride leader,” he said.
Valor gazed admiringly at her mate. Tough, Hardy, and Gracious growled among themselves, their tone approving. Keen flicked his ears forward, looking impressed.
Fearless glared at the meat. Was Mighty mocking him? No, probably not. He was too good for that.
Capable. Self-effacing. Modest. Respectful.
Great Spirit, I hate him.
“Is something wrong, Fearless?” Gracious asked anxiously.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he snapped. “Why would it be wrong? Everything’s quiet here. No trouble. We’ve been just fine on our own.”
“All right.” Gracious backed away, looking nervous.
Fearless ignored them all, even Keen, until he heard them settle to a contented, full-bellied sleep. Hardy’s deep rumbling snores mingled with Rough’s lighter ones; Mighty grunted drowsily and rolled even closer to Valor. Rounded, well-fed flanks rose and fell in the moonlight. But Fearless’s own head buzzed with wakefulness and irritation.
And guilt, he realized despondently.
He’d failed Ruthless. And he had to find a way to put it right.