“We patrol only certain sections,” Swoop explained, padding up to stand beside Crag. “Other groups will protect the rest of the border.”

Dovewing nodded, privately thinking that it wouldn’t take a lot of effort for enemies to figure out there were gaps between each patrol. She cast out her senses and almost at once picked up the sound of cats far away, beyond the border.

They must be the intruders the Tribe is always talking about. But they don’t sound threatening now. They’re hunting, but they’re not trespassing on Tribe territory.

She tensed as she heard the raucous screech of an eagle and instinctively looked up, but the bird was no more than a speck in the sky, well away from where her patrol was standing. Farther away still, she could hear the answering call of eagle chicks and caught a glimpse of them, bald and scrawny, in a mountaintop nest.

Then Dovewing heard a scratching sound much closer by. She identified a vole, pushing its way through the moss at the edge of the frozen stream, hidden by the ice that overhung the bank. She could smell it, too, just a faint trace beneath the clean, sharp scent of snow.

“Vole!” she yowled, leaping for the stream.

To her amazement, Stormfur knocked her aside; Dovewing sprawled on the ice at the water’s edge.

“What—?” she began, scrambling up.

“If you fall through the snow into the stream, you’ll get dangerously cold,” Stormfur explained. “Sorry if I hurt you.”

Dovewing shook her head. “I’m fine.” Is he saying that I could die, just from getting wet? “But there’s prey under there,” she added, guessing that none of the others had heard the vole. Listening again, she realized that the vole had stopped moving. Mouse dung! It heard us. That will make it far more difficult to catch.

Gray and Splash padded up, their ears pricked and their jaws parted to pick up the least trace of prey. “Well done for spotting it,” Splash murmured to Dovewing. “Can you hear it now?”

Dovewing stretched all her senses, and finally heard a faint, cautious scuffling that told her the vole was on the move again. Without speaking, she nodded toward the spot on the bank where she thought the vole was hiding.

“Just under the bank,” Gray whispered, and Splash nodded.

Taking up positions on either side of the vole, the two Tribe prey-hunters dug down into the snow with strong, thin legs. Crag and Swoop stood guard over each of their Tribemates.

“The cave-guards stay with the prey-hunters,” Stormfur explained to Dovewing and Foxleap. “See how they’re watching the sky? They’ll warn Gray and Splash if any eagles appear.”

Dovewing noticed that both prey-hunters were pushing through the snow at an angle, so that they left the top layer undisturbed. “They’re getting as close as they can to the vole without alerting it,” she murmured. “We might try that back home if we get snow next leaf-bare.”

“Right,” Stormfur meowed. “And when the vole does realize, there’s a cat waiting wherever it decides to run.”