At last they drew close to the Carrionplace. Yellowfang could smell its stink before she saw the dark heaps looming up in front of her. Like before, the yellow monsters were quiet; the only sound came from big white birds that flapped and shrieked above the piles of waste.
While the patrols approached the Twoleg fence, Sagewhisker cast around among the bushes at the edge of the marsh.
“What are you doing?” Yellowfang asked.
“Finding a place under a bush,” the medicine cat replied, “where we can store our herbs and stay out of sight during the fighting.”
“So we’ll be hiding?” Yellowfang mewed in dismay.
“No.” Sagewhisker’s eyes were sympathetic as she gazed at Yellowfang. “We’ll be keeping ourselves safe for when our Clanmates need us.”
Yellowfang still thought it was a strange way to behave, but she made no protest, and wriggled underneath a holly bush to lay out the herbs and cobweb they had brought. Her paws tingled with the urge to help as she watched Raggedpelt and his patrol pad up to the Twoleg fence. Raggedpelt found a hole in the silver mesh, and he and Featherstorm enlarged it with their teeth and claws to let cats in and rats out. Meanwhile, Foxheart and Wolfstep started dragging branches up to build the trap.
“Look what we found!” Newtspeck called from the edge of the marsh. She, Frogtail, and Lizardstripe were rolling a small tree trunk in front of them. “We managed to pull it out of the ground,” she panted as they reached the fence. “Its roots are rotten, so it wasn’t hard. I thought it would make a good vantage point for us to stand and jump down on the rats.”
Raggedpelt nodded. “You’re right; it will.”
As the walls of the trap took shape he checked them carefully, leaping up on top to make sure they would bear a cat’s weight. At one point the wall collapsed under him; Yellowfang gasped as he vanished in a whirl of flailing limbs and flying branches. But a moment later he crawled out, shaking debris from his pelt.
“Build it up again,” he ordered, “and put a stronger branch at the bottom this time.”
Raggedpelt stepped back while the rest of his patrol worked on the repairs. Yellowfang slipped out from under the holly bush and padded over to him. “Good luck,” she murmured.
Raggedpelt looked at her. “I wish you were fighting alongside me,” he mewed.
Yellowfang turned her head away. “I will be here,” she whispered.
She expected that Raggedpelt would walk away from her in disgust; instead she felt his nose touch her ear. “I’ll see you after the battle,” he promised.
A screech sounded from somewhere inside the Carrionplace, telling Raggedpelt that the other patrols were in place. Raggedpelt checked that his own patrol was ready, then yowled in reply.
“Yellowfang! Over here!”
Yellowfang looked around to see Sagewhisker beckoning to her from under the bush. Reluctantly she bounded back to join her, but stayed outside the branches to watch the attack. She realized she was holding her breath.
Silence followed the yowls, broken after a few heartbeats by faint sounds of scrabbling and hissing.
Suddenly Yellowfang spotted a rat hurtling out of the heap of waste. It swerved away from the hole that Raggedpelt’s patrol had made, but was driven back on course by Nutwhisker leaping down to block its way. The first rat was followed by more, and more and more—more rats than Yellowfang had ever seen before. At the same time, cats began to appear, leaping down from the waste to steer the rats toward the hole in the mesh.
Raggedpelt’s patrol was waiting on top of the barriers, crouched and ready to pounce. The rats swirled at the base of the fence, beginning to panic as they realized they were trapped. Yellowfang saw Brackenfoot jump into the center of the heaving mass and shove one toward the hole.
“That way, stupid flea-pelt!” he snarled.
The other rats fled after it, thinking they had found a way of escape. But their squeaks grew louder when they realized that cats were waiting on that side of the fence, too. Raggedpelt’s patrol jumped down one by one, grabbing a rat and dealing the deathblow, and scrambling back out with the fresh-kill in their jaws.
“It’s working!” Foxheart yowled.
“Watch out for their teeth!” Wolfstep panted as he dragged out a rat almost as big as he was.
