She led the way through an archway into a larger den. Light streamed into it from a long slit in the wal .

As Lionblaze padded hesitantly forward, the smel of cats grew overpoweringly strong; it was almost like coming back into the camp after a patrol in the forest. Hol yleaf kept close to him, their pelts brushing, while Brambleclaw and Brackenfur stayed on the outside of the group. Lionblaze knew they were ready to protect the younger cats if they needed to. And so am I. If we have to fight our way out, I'm ready.

Brambleclaw signaled for his patrol to halt in the center of the den. A broad-shouldered gray tom sat on a shal ow ledge just below the gap in the wal , while a she-cat with a flecked brown pelt was curled up on something like a soft boulder in bright Twoleg colors. Four kits suckled at her bel y. On the other side of the den, another cat was barely visible as he peered out from underneath some wooden Twoleg thing.

Lionblaze caught his breath as he recognized the black-and-white tom sitting on top of another soft-looking boulder. He was the cat they had met the night before, who had run away from them.

"I'm Jingo," the tabby she-cat announced, before Lionblaze could speak. "Over there is Hussar"-she waved her tail at the gray tom sitting on the ledge -"and the queen with kits is Speckle."

"Hi, there," Hussar meowed, with a lazy wave of his tail. Speckle just twitched her ears; she looked wary, as if she was afraid the newcomers might harm her kits.

"Over there's Pod," the tabby she-cat went on. The cat underneath the wooden structure blinked at them.

"Come out, Pod, no cat is going to hurt you. And I think you've already met Fritz."

As she finished speaking, she leaped up onto the squashy boulder beside the black-and-white tom. He stared at the Clan cats, wide-eyed, and didn't speak.

Brambleclaw stepped forward. "Who did you think we were?" he asked Fritz. When the tom didn't reply, he turned to Jingo. "When we met him last night he he turned to Jingo. "When we met him last night he seemed to think we were connected with another cat, one who talked to you but ended up causing you trouble. Do you know who that was?"

"We don't trust strangers around here anymore."

Jingo's voice was solemn. "Not since Sol."

Lionblaze felt a jolt in his bel y. We were right! Sol has been here!

"Sol?" Brackenfur's neck fur rippled. "You know him, then?"

Jingo nodded. "He came here last leaf-bare, but no cat knows where from. He lived on the edge of Twolegplace for a while, then when the weather turned colder he moved into this abandoned Twoleg nest and invited some other cats without housefolk to join him."

"I was one of the first." Pod emerged from underneath the wooden thing, revealing himself to be a scrawny brown tom, his muzzle gray with age.

"Speckle and Fritz came with me."

"And I joined later, with Hussar," Jingo went on. "I heard about the community of cats that had made a home for themselves, and it sounded like a good idea."

"Did Sol act like he was your leader?" Lionblaze asked. The patch-pelted loner had tried to take over ShadowClan; maybe that wasn't the first time he'd been in control of a group of cats.

"Yes, did he ever tel you to believe anything in particular?" Hol yleaf added.

Jingo looked puzzled. "Not exactly. Only that we could live however we wanted to, because that's what we deserved. Life was good, he said...."

"Life was not good!" Pod snapped. He sat down and lifted a hind leg to scratch behind his ear. "We had to do whatever Sol told us to, like bring him food and feathers for his nest. And he scared the little cats by tel ing them that they'd die without him."

"It wasn't that bad!" Jingo protested. "You're just thinking of what happened later."

"And why wouldn't I?" Pod stopped scratching to glare at her. "That mouse-brained idiot nearly got us al kil ed!"

Fritz nodded vigorously, giving his whiskers a nervous twitch, but stil didn't speak.

Lionblaze glanced at Hol yleaf; she looked as shocked as he felt, her eyes glittering and her claws working on the hard Twoleg floor. When Sol had lived in the forest, he never wanted cats to die, Lionblaze thought. Is Hollyleaf wondering if he really could have killed Ashfur?

He was distracted by Speckle's four kits, who left their mother and scrambled down, one after another, from the soft boulder. Speckle sat up, watching nervously as the biggest of the four, a tom with a flecked brown pelt like his mother, bounced up to Brambleclaw.

"I'm Frisk," he announced. "What's your name?

Are you coming to live here?"

Brambleclaw shook his head. "We're just passing through. I'm Brambleclaw," he added, addressing al the cats. He went on to introduce the rest of the patrol. "Thanks for helping us," he finished, dipping his head to Jingo. "The dogs would have ripped us to pieces without you."

"We'd help any cat in danger from those dogs,"

Jingo responded. "And you're welcome to stay as long as you like."

"Thank you." Brambleclaw bowed again. "Now, can you tel us what Sol did?"

Jingo settled herself on the soft boulder, tucking her paws underneath her chest. Hussar sprang down lightly from the ledge and padded over to sit beside Pod. For the first time, Lionblaze noticed that he had a long scar along his side, where the fur hadn't grown back. Glancing around, he noticed that the others had signs of injury, too: One of Fritz's ears was torn, Pod's muzzle was scarred, and the tip of Jingo's tail was missing.

"These cats have been fighting hard," he muttered to Hol yleaf.

He sat down on the hard Twoleg floor, longing for the grass of the forest or the soft moss of his nest in the warriors' den. Hol yleaf sat beside him, her claws stil flexing restlessly, and their Clanmates gathered around.

"Sol didn't cause any trouble at first," Jingo began.

"He kept to himself and stayed out of kittypet territory."

"He was the first cat to find this abandoned Twoleg den," Hussar put in. "He started inviting other cats to live here with him-cats without housefolk of their own, to start with."

"He said he wanted to keep us al safe," Speckle mewed, creeping a bit closer to the edge of the soft boulder.

boulder.

Pod snorted. "More likely he wanted us to do things for him. Lazy lump. He had an easy life here."

"That's not fair!" Speckle protested. "We're safer here than wandering about in the open, sleeping under bushes."

"So what happened next?"

Brambleclaw prompted, before Pod could continue the argument.

"More and more cats joined him here." Jingo took up the story again. "I lived with housefolk then, but I liked the sound of what Sol was doing, so I came to give it a try."

"I joined soon after her," Hussar added. "I liked the freedom. I could come and go without waiting for my housefolk to let me in and out."

"And catching our own prey was better than eating that dry Twoleg food," meowed Jingo.

"But why did the Twolegs let you stay?" Brackenfur asked curiously. "Don't they want this nest?"

"Obviously not," Hussar replied with a shrug.

"Twoleg kits used to come here now and again,"

Jingo explained. "They never tried to chase us out, though, and they don't come anymore."

"Sol told us what to do if adult Twolegs came,"

Speckle explained. "There's a dark space right at the top of the nest, with a pointed roof. Sol told us to hide up there."

"They did come once or twice." Fritz spoke for the first time. "So we al hid."

"And the Twolegs never found us," Speckle added proudly.

Even though he had good reasons for not trusting Sol, Lionblaze realized that what he had done here wasn't al bad. The cats had shelter here and support from one another. He wasn't sure why kittypets would want to come, but it was certainly better for loners than trying to survive in the open through the harsh moons of leaf-bare. It was like a Twolegplace version of a Clan.

"So what went wrong?" he meowed.

"Can't you guess?" Jingo replied bleakly. "The dogs found us. They couldn't get in here, because most of them are too big to get through that narrow gap at the entrance."

"A little one pushed his way in, once." Hussar extended his claws, the beginnings of a snarl in his throat. "He didn't try it twice."

"But they lay in wait for us whenever we came out,"

Fritz continued with a shudder. "And then they chased us."

"Clumsy, oafish brutes!" The tip of Pod's tail twitched.

"If we did manage to hunt, they stole our prey,"

Jingo continued. "And they kil ed Flower." Her eyes clouded with sorrow and guilt. "She was a beautiful young cat. Her housefolk had the den next to mine, and I persuaded her to come here."

She bowed her head, and Fritz nudged her shoulder.

"So how did Sol react to that?" Brackenfur asked, after a moment's respectful silence.

"He told us we needed to show the dogs that we had the right to live here." Hussar took up the story.

"So he made a plan. He found a smal unused den beside that stretch of stone where the monsters sleep. He said if we could lure the dogs in there they wouldn't be able to get away while we fought them."

Fritz shuddered, letting out a frightened mewling sound, and sank his claws into the soft boulder underneath. Jingo pressed up against him comfortingly.

"It didn't work?" Brambleclaw guessed, though Lionblaze already knew the answer to that question.

"What do you think?" Pod spat.

"Sol showed us how to fight," Jingo went on. "We spent a lot of time training-"

"Which meant there wasn't enough time to hunt,"

Pod interrupted. "My bel y thought my throat was clawed out."

Jingo ignored the interruption. "Then Sol said we were ready. He chose a tom cal ed Pepper to go out and catch some prey, and then get the dogs to chase him to the smal den. We were al lying in wait, ready to fol ow the dogs in and fight them. Sol was with us, and when-"

"Why are you talking about that piece of fox dung?" A new voice spoke from behind Lionblaze, who glanced over his shoulder to see a black tom standing in the entrance to the den. His fluffed-out fur made him look twice his size, and his tail whipped from side to side.

Lionblaze's muscles tensed; a cat who looked like that was ready to attack. But then he realized that the black tom's anger wasn't directed toward him or his Clanmates.

"It's okay, Jet," Jingo replied. "These cats asked "It's okay, Jet," Jingo replied. "These cats asked about-"

"It's not okay," Jet hissed. "It'l never be okay. I don't want to think about that cat ever again!" Stil bristling, he whirled around and disappeared.

"I'm sorry if we've upset him..." Hazeltail mewed, gazing after the black tom.

"It's not your fault," Jingo assured her. "Pepper was his littermate, and now he can't bear for any cat to mention Sol."

"Pepper died?" Hol yleaf asked.

Hussar nodded, his eyes clouding. "Before we ever made it into the den. We were hiding on the roof of one of the other dens, and we saw Pepper streaking across the stone space with the dogs on his tail. I've never heard such a racket as they were making! Then we heard this awful shriek-"

Lionblaze's paws tingled as a yowl sounded from outside the den, almost as if Hussar's words had cal ed it up. It was fol owed by an outbreak of barking, drawing rapidly closer. Al the Clan cats crouched closer to the ground, frozen by fear, their claws scraping on the hard floor. Pod whisked back underneath the Twoleg thing, while Speckle gestured urgently with her tail. "Kits-come here quickly." The four kits scrambled back onto the soft boulder, and Speckle circled them protectively with her legs and tail.

Only Jingo and Hussar seemed calm. Jingo meowed, "They can't get in."

Lionblaze jumped at the sound of scrabbling just outside the den. Hussar leaped to his paws, only to relax a moment later as a ginger-and-white she-cat poked her head through the entrance; a mouse dangled limply from her jaws. Just behind her, a young gray tabby tom peered over her shoulder.

"Oh, it's you, Merry." Hussar arched his back in a stretch, then sat down again. "And Chirp. Come and meet these new cats."

Merry took a step into the den, her green gaze flickering from one Clan cat to another. Then she shook her head, mumbled something inaudible around the mouthful of prey, and retreated; Lionblaze heard the sound of her paw steps fading.

Chirp, however, padded into the den and sat down. But he stayed near the door and kept casting nervous glances over his shoulder.

"We're al jumpy since the fight with the dogs,"

Hussar commented.

"And can you blame us?" Pod emerged again and gave his chest fur a few licks, as if trying to pretend he hadn't shot so quickly into hiding.

"Tel us what happened," Lionblaze prompted.

"After you heard the shriek..."

"We al raced into the den," Jingo went on, digging her claws into the soft boulder. "Pepper was already dead. The dogs were tossing his body about. We attacked, but there were too many of them, and they were too big and fierce for us. Every cat was injured.

The dogs ripped Frosty to pieces, and Jester was so badly wounded that he died after we brought him back here."

Lionblaze felt sick. Sol had made a terrible mistake. Every cat could have died in that single battle, and it was obvious the dogs were stil causing trouble.

"Ask me if Sol joined in the fight," Pod rasped.

Brambleclaw cocked his ears. "Wel ?"