[the siege]

viii. chapter eight

"Frogpaw!" Excitement churned in Adderpaw's belly as she sprinted over a fallen tree and bounded back to her clanmate.

"Adderpaw?" Frogpaw looked puzzled but still brushed against Adderpaw's cheek as she greeted her clanmate. "What are you doing here?"

Adderpaw explained how she had been hunting a mouse and then had heard a shriek. She had smelled the unfamiliar scent of something and although she couldn't quite place her paw on it, she quickly came to realize that it was a rogue that had then captured her.

"I must have passed out because the last thing I remember was yowling as I was dragged to this place," Adderpaw admitted. "Then, I woke up here. Oh, Frogpaw, I've missed you!"

Frogpaw nuzzled Adderpaw once more before they broke away. "I came here because it reminded me of ThunderClan. Although, I don't know if we'll ever see it again. I wonder where we even are."

Adderpaw couldn't help but agree with her. "Yeah. I don't know how long I was asleep, but the journey to get here definitely took a while since when we were captured, it was only around sunhigh. I woke up in the night, though, and met some of my new denmates. They claim to be from the Tribe of Rushing Water."

"Oh, didn't Bunnyhaze and Daisypelt tell us about the Tribe? Our Clan made some journey through the mountains from another land long, long ago and the Tribe gave our ancestors a safe place to sleep and food to eat."

Memories came flooding back to Adderpaw of when she was a kit and she and her friends would wander into the elders' den, begging for stories.

The sound of something crashing through the leaves disrupted her nostalgic thoughts and instinctively, Adderpaw and Frogpaw darted behind a tree and under a berry bush. They could just make out what the cats that were approaching were talking about.

"Stupid Clan cats," one of them was saying, causing the two apprentices' fur to bristle angrily. "When will they learn that they have to share? It started with StreamClan or whatever—"

"RiverClan!" Frogpaw hissed under her breath.

"—they just don't seem to understand that we have nowhere else to go!" the same cat that Frogpaw had interrupted mewed, seeming like he really believed that he wasn't doing any harm to the Clan cats.

Adderpaw started to think about whether or not these cats were lying. Not all cats were necessarily bad. Even the villains had a reason for being the way that they were. Perhaps they really didn't have anywhere to go. Adderpaw shook her head abruptly. No—these cats were just getting into her mind. She shot a guilty glance towards Frogpaw.

"Come on, we'd better round up all of those cats so that they can share their prey with the Superiors." the other cat mewed, sniffing around at the fronds and leaves for any scent of cat.

Frogpaw looked alarmed and her fur fluffed out. Adderpaw shared her frightened behaviour. She hoped that the cats wouldn't scent them and find them hiding in the bushes, listening to them. If the cats caught the pair of ThunderClan cats, would they be mad? They were just following orders and were hunting, anyways.

"I can smell someone." Mewed one of the cats. Through the bush, Adderpaw could see a pure white she-cat looking around the gorge. "Whatever. They'll come out if they want to. They're probably just hunting anyway."

Adderpaw felt Frogpaw tense beside her and they shared quick looks of alarm.

The other cat, an ash grey tomcat, looked bewildered. "You're just going to let them go? They could escape, Xena!"

"Where to, might I ask?" The cat named Xena turned to look straight at their hiding spot. Adderpaw could see her ice blue eyes peering at them as if she were warning them that they couldn't escape. As if she knew that they were there. It would be quite obvious, what with their ThunderClan scent and their fear scent.