p r o l o g u e
The cats fell into single file to pick their way along the ledge.
"Carry the kits!" Blackstar called down the line, and his yowl echoed eerily off the walls of the gorge.
The ledge followed the curve of the mountain, sloping up toward a narrow pass between the two peaks. The mountainside echoed with the rattle of stones as the edge of the path crumbled beneath the cats' paws and sent grit showering down into the shadows below. Leafpaw walked as close as she could to the rock face, her heart hammering. She could feel Sorreltail's warm breath behind her.
Suddenly a wail rang out from up ahead, and a large chunk of rock clattered endlessly down into the abyss. A hole yawned in the narrow path, sending Smokepaw, a ShadowClan apprentice, plummeting into nothingness. For a moment he clutched desperately at the ledge, his claws scratching against the stone. Russetfur, the ShadowClan deputy, lunged to grab him, but her extra weight only dislodged more stones, and the edge where Smokepaw clung suddenly dropped away. Russetfur leapt backward, only just managing to save herself. The apprentice fell, twisting violently into the air, and disappeared into the darkness.
A ShadowClan queen leaned over the precipice. "Smokepaw!"
"Get back!" Stormfur yowled. He weaved like a fish back along the ledge and dragged her back.
As the cats stared in frozen horror, Leafpaw willed StarClan to take the apprentice quickly. Blackstar peered over the edge. "There's nothing we can do," he meowed, straightening up. "We have to keep going."
"You're going to leave him?" wailed the queen.
"He won't have survived that fall," Blackstar told her. "And we can't reach his body." He touched the queen's flank with his muzzle. "I'm sorry, Nightwing."
Smokepaw landed with a thud on a ledge. He couldn't feel his front right paw, which he'd landed on. He must have broken it. The smoky gray tom gazed painfully up at the hole he'd fallen through, a shower of pebbles landing on his face. He could barely make out a dark head peering over the side, and then it withdrew. After a frozen silence, a few blurs began to hop over the hole he'd created. Probably the cats who were behind me, he thought guiltily. He hoped no one else fell through, because it would be his fault.
Soon the blurs stopped crossing above him. No more cats leapt over the gorge
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