Peering through the swirling ice, he spotted a narrow gully leading away from the main valley. Steep rocky sides sheltered it from the worst of the wind, and farther down he could just make out a dark, bushy mass of thorns.

“Hey!” he called out to the patrol who had drawn a few tail-lengths ahead of him. “This looks like a good place to start.”

The other three cats slogged back to his side and followed his lead as he trudged down into the gully. Jayfeather felt a vast relief to be out of the wind, though the ground was covered with deep, powdery drifts of snow that clung to their fur as they thrust their way through.

“There might be small creatures sheltering under there,” he meowed, waving his tail toward the thorn thicket. “It’s worth a try, at least.”

“True,” Stone Song grunted. “Well spotted.”

Cautiously approaching the bushes, Jayfeather pricked his ears to listen for prey, and opened his jaws to taste the air. Though the wind still blustered among the rocks above his head, he thought he could pick up the tiny scratching sounds that meant mice or shrews might be moving around inside the thicket.

“Let’s hunt as a team,” he suggested, trying to remember what Lionblaze and Hollyleaf had told him about hunting with the Tribe on their last visit. “Two of us could go into the bushes and chase the prey out, and two of us stay here to catch it.”

“Good idea!” Half Moon mewed, flexing her claws with excitement. “I’m the smallest, so I get to go in!” Crouching down until her belly fur brushed the snow, she crept underneath the outermost branches. But as she tried to pull herself farther in, thorns snagged in the fur on her back, and however much she tugged, she couldn’t free herself.

“I’m stuck!” she wailed.

“Be quiet or you’ll scare the prey,” Stone Song told her.

“I thought that was the idea,” Half Moon muttered.

Chasing Clouds clawed at the branch with a raised forepaw. “Keep still,” he mewed, “and I’ll soon have you out of there.”

The whole bush started to shake as Chasing Clouds dug his claws harder into the branch, trying to tear it away from his daughter’s pelt. As Jayfeather watched, he glimpsed movement at the corner of his eye, and spotted a shrew darting out from the shelter of the bush.

“Yes!”

The shrew was heading straight for Jayfeather, but as he swiped at it, his paws felt slow and clumsy. He grabbed at it with claws outstretched, missing it by a whisker. The shrew veered away and dived into a gap between two rocks before Jayfeather could pounce again.

“Fox dung!” he exclaimed.

“Bad luck.” To Jayfeather’s surprise, Stone Song didn’t sound angry, or even particularly disappointed. “At least it shows that there is prey here,” he went on. “More than the puny little mouse Chasing Clouds caught this morning.”

Chasing Clouds had managed to free Half Moon from the thorns, and she backed out from under the bushes, shivering and craning her neck to see whether she had lost any fur.