When Fleck awoke, early in the morning, she was greeted by Sparrow’s grinning face. Fleck blinked her half-opened eyes a few times in attempt to clear her sleep-blurred vision.
“What do you want, Sparrow?” Fleck grumbled sleepily.
“What are we doing today for training?” Sparrow asked brightly, hopping up and down with excitement.
Fleck managed an exhausted half-smile. “Straight to the point, aren’t we?” she intoned with a weak but playful and teasing demeanor.
“Mm-hm,” Sparrow chirped happily. I was not uncommon for him to get offended by his fellow guards’ teasing remarks, but he seemed far to happy to be put down by such a small comment. “Anyway, what are you going to teach me today?”
Fleck rose and gave a long and luxurious stretch made complete with a greatly exaggerated yawn. “What time is it, midnight?” she asked tiredly. It felt like she had been sleeping for only a couple of minutes. It couldn’t already be early enough for training.
“Late morning,” Sparrow said, waving the matter aside as if it were unimportant. “So anyway, what are we going to do for training today?”
“Wow, it’s late,” Fleck commented in a bored manner, continuing to ignore poor Sparrow’s question. “I didn’t miss the morning rations, did I?”
“No, you breakfast’s waiting for you outside,” Sparrow answered quickly with a hint of impatience. “But what am I going to learn in training today?” His tone was strained and desperate.
“Okay, then,” Fleck said, stifling a laugh. “They’re probably cold as ice by now. See you later, Sparrow.”
Sparrow gave a heavy sigh and tried again, his unlimited patience beginning to fail him. “While you’re eating, could we please discus training?” he asked, emphasizing the word ‘please’ by a great length.
Fleck continued to ignore her excessively eager pupil and walked out of the guards’ den in an unhurried fashion. Sparrow followed her at such a rushed gait, he gained on her within several moments. All the while he urged her to talk to him about training, and she proceeded to ignore him.
While Fleck was eating, Sparrow held his breath with excitement and hope that Fleck would cease ignoring him. Fleck intended to do nothing of the sort, even when her apprentice went purple in the face. As a matter of fact, she found this whole ordeal extremely amusing. By the time Fleck had finished the wood mouse that she had been given as a morning ration, Sparrow had fallen over on his side.
“All right,” Fleck sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’ll stop. We’re going to be doing some battle training today.”
Sparrow continued to lay there, gasping like a dying fish. After at least a full minute of this, he excitedly leapt to his paws and shouted happily, “Really? Really? We are? Really?” Until he was out of breath again and flopped back to the ground, gasping to regain his breath.
Fleck gave her apprentice a playful kick in the side and laughed with teasing humor. “Get up you little fool!”
Sparrow obliged and followed his grinning mentor to the training grounds, where all of the other guards had already gathered. Sparrow stopped when they were about four yards into the grounds, and Fleck continued walking until she was about two yards away from him. Then she turned around to face her apprentice; the way all of the guards and their apprentices were standing.
“Okay, so you’ve done really good with your training so far,” Fleck began praisingly. “Especially as battle training. But you still have a great many things to learn. Even the greatest fighter doesn’t known everything there is to know. So today I am going to show you how to--”
Fleck was cut off by something that her keen eyes caught in the bushes. It was a flame-colored paw sticking out of the greenery and waving frantically back and forth, beaconing to come forth.
“What is it?” Sparrow asked Fleck, trying to follow the direction that her eyes were looking.
Fleck quickly tore her gaze away from the ginger paw, knowing who it was. She knew that if Sparrow saw it, he would know that something fishy was going on. “Nothing,” she replied quickly in an even and unworried tone. “It’s just that I was thinking: you really haven’t mastered quite a few of the battle techniques that I have taught you. You practice them and try to get them perfectly right while I go and get drink of water from the river. That breakfast left me feeling dry. Okay?”
“O-okay,” Sparrow stammered with a bit of hesitation and disappointment that was clumsily hidden.
Fleck gave him a friendly nod and an encouraging smile before she dashed off into the greenery. Ember’s orange paw was still frantically waving at her, as if he were trying to make her hurry up.
“What’s wrong with you?” she hissed under her breath, glaring at her slightly dimwitted king.
“There have been three murders!” Ember wailed urgently in clumsy attempt to keep his voice down.
“Quiet!” Fleck instructed in a harsh whisper, glaring with rage at Ember. “I’m just as shocked and depressed as you are, but we mustn’t lose our heads over the matter! And believe me, Slate’s cats will chop yours off if you continue wailing over this. So shut up1 Or would you rather be killed?” As of now, Fleck was in a foul mood.
Ember whimpered and cowered by a bare, fruitless raspberry bush, looking extremely pathetic.
“Well, anyway, this is no place to talk about such matters,” Fleck decided gruffly, sitting back decisively on her haunches. “Why don’t we go back to the kingdom and discus the three murders further there? How about in, I dunno, lets just say around an hour; once I finish training with Sparrow. I don’t want them--being the guards--to think that anything fishy is going on. See you then.”
Ember gave her a quick nod and hurried off. Fleck took her time walking back, seeing as her conversation had not been quite long enough to consider as long as an enjoyed drink in the river. Once she was there, she resumed training Sparrow, who was more then ready to learn anything that she could teach him and didn’t seem too be holding any grudges against Fleck for abandoning him.
“So today,” she started, “I will be teaching you how to execute ‘the Flying Grapple,’ which is a fairly easy move that I think you will catch on to quickly.”
“Great!” Sparrow chirped eagerly, grinning from ear to ear. “What do I have to do in ‘the Flying Grapple?’”
Fleck hesitated a moment, trying to figure out a way to explain. Then she began, “‘The Flying Grapple’ is when you are at least a yard or more away from your opponent and you lunge at them, claws unsheathed. You have to be a distance away so that you hit the enemy with lots of force, preferably enough to knock it down. If not, you will at least be able to have stunned the opposing cat and then you will be able to give it a good blow on the head or chest to knock it down. Once it’s on the ground, you can pin it there.
“You are now in a superior position to you opponent’s and have a great many different battle moves that you can use on him or her from where you are. Some of these could end your enemy’s life or knock it out. I personally prefer the kinder technique of stunning and knocking out my opponent, but there are situations where you will have to kill the enemy. In either, this move is very helpful. But if you are going for stunning, then you might want to leap at closer range and apply less pressure, or you might accidentally snap the opposing cat’s spinal cord.”
Sparrow was exited, thrilled and slightly scared all at the same time. “So what do you do?” he asked, slightly at a loss for breath.
“Well, I have to show you,” Fleck said with a slightly wicked smile.
Sparrow shuddered and cringed, bracing himself for deadly impact.
Fleck’s laugh was full of blissful mirth. “Don’t worry, silly, I’ll be gentle. I’m going to execute the move from a little less then a yard away and I’ll keep my claws sheathed. I’d be surprised if I even managed to knock you over.”
Fleck walked quite a ways closer to Sparrow, then crouched, preparing to spring. She wriggled her haunches with excitement, as they really didn’t do much weaponless fighting and she missed it. Then she leaped upon him with more force then she had intended. Sparrow fell to the ground, hitting his head on the hard packed dirt and blacking out.
“Oops,” Fleck muttered lamely, looking guilty.
Most of the other guards had seen what had happened, and those who didn’t were later filled in by others. The took Sparrow back to the hollow ash tree that served as the guards’ den. In all of the blind rush, Fleck was able to slip away. Although she felt guilty about hurting her apprentice, she had promised Ember that she would meet up with him soon and she didn’t know when she’d get another chance.
Once she was out of sight and in the shrinking shadows, Fleck dashed towards Ember’s kingdom as fast as her legs would carry her. Once she reached her destination, she was greeted by an ugly sight, unfit for the eyes of any cat. Three bloodied bodies with their throats slit lay motionless in the clearing, an air of death choking out any happiness in the atmosphere. Several mourning cats sobbed beside the bodies, and a troubled-looking orange tom stood in the middle of the clearing as if waiting. Fleck recognized him at once as her king, Ember.
“Ember!” Fleck called to him to let him know that she was there.
Ember’s head whipped around, obviously startled. Once he saw that it was Fleck, his face relaxed a little, but seeing her did not relieve it of its tense and depressed appearance.
“This horrible place is not one fit for talking.” When he spoke, Ember’s voice was tired. He sounded near to tears; and looked it, too.
Fleck nodded in agreement, glancing at the weeping cats gathered beside their lost friends. She followed Ember into his chambers, which were neat and clean, yet lacked a certain feeling. The once-beautiful room now felt hollow and lifeless.
There was a white vase hand-painted with bright wild berries and curling green vines sitting atop a attractive little bistre-colored vanity that was empty aside from the vase. It was filled with drooping flowers that looked like orchids. The ground was covered by dark, polished wooden planks. There was a low, dark brown wooden table surrounded by four deep purple cushions, placed at an angle so that they were diamond-shaped. The walls of Ember’s chambers were painted blue-gray.
In one corner, there was a small steel blue sofa that looked like it could hold two cats. It had three decorative pillows resting at its arms. The solitary one on the left was square and a shade of velvety-purple. The other two were on the right. The bottom one was the color of sapphire and the same shape as the left one, and the other was round and cream-colored. On another corner of the room was a tall but modest lamp with a red-violet lampshade and dark brown stand. To its direct left was a highly polished rocking chair the same color as the lamp’s stand with a light, but not neon, chair cushion with minty-green vertical stripes.
Ember sat down on one of the cushions by the low table, gesturing to Fleck to do the same.
“So do you have any leads on the murderer?” Fleck inquired.
“No,” Ember replied with a mournful shake of his head. “I have no idea who it could be. Probably one of Slate’s lot, but then you would know. Wouldn’t you?”
“Not necessarily, no,” Fleck told him truthfully with great embarrassment. “In fact, there have been several things that he hasn’t told us or has waited until the last minute to do so. Honestly, I don’t think he trusts us. But, truth to be told, I don’t know a single one of Slate’s cats that would do this. Slate: too afraid of death. He would never come here and do it himself, he’d just let someone else do his dirty work. Ginger and Jade: they are too proud. They’d only kill a cat when he or she’s awake and fit to fight. GoldenSunn: doesn’t have brains enough to even figure out how to lift a knife. Cinder and Ash: too youthful to do a deed as evil as this. Sparrow: far to timid.”
Ember nodded in agreement. “I’m afraid that this whole ordeal is going to scare away my new recruit, Quince.”
“That would be a problem,” Fleck agreed with a nod. “She seems like a really good fighter and you need that kind of cat if we are going to win the war.”
“Yes,” Ember murmured as if he were only half-listening. “As soon as FireClaw--he’s one of my better fighters, but not the best--discovered the bodies of our fallen friends, he reported it to me. I then informed all of my cats about it, including Quince. She seemed grievous, bewildered, and scared. I’m afraid that she will soon abandon us, leaving me short of four cats.”
“Is there any known motive of the murder?” Fleck asked, trying to veer away from topics of the war. She didn’t know who she wanted to win the war, and speaking about it made her mixed up thoughts even more confusing.
“Well...” Ember trailed of thoughtfully, “...All three of the cats that were murdered--FireLilly, Gemini and Spark--were quite the fighters, some of our best. In fact, they were close to being as good as Quince. So maybe Slate’s trying to focus on my best fighters and eliminate them.”
“That’s a good point,” Fleck agreed. “What was the estimated time of the three murders?”
“Probably at night,” Ember replied with a helpless shrug. “All I know is that FireClaw found them early in the morning, while I was having a conference with Quince. All of the other cats weren’t even awake yet, so it has to have been at night.”
Fleck nodded in agreement. “I suppose so. When did your meeting with Quince begin and what was it about?”
“Well, I think that it started around a half hour before FireClaw interrupted with the news. And I was just expanding Quince’s knowledge of how the war started, of details on the several inside murders, and of the battles that we’ve had so far. She’s a good listener and did’t interrupt much.”
Fleck agreed. “Quince was a very personable cat and I’m glad that she wasn’t targeted, too.”
“She just as soon might be,” Ember sighed, voice laden with worry. “And she knows it. I’m sure that she doesn’t want to be a sitting duck.”
“It’s really to bad,” Fleck said regretfully. “This war will be hard to win without her.”
Ember gave Fleck weary nod. Fleck saw how emotionally exhausted her king was, and decided that it would be best if she left ad let him rest. Besides, she really had to check on Sparrow.
“Well, I should get going before the other guards think that something’s up,” Fleck called over her shoulder, already beginning to take her leave of the mournful place. “Notify me on any further developments of the murder.”
“Okay, I will!” Ember was shouting so that Fleck could hear him even from the growing distance away. “Why don’t we meet tonight? I could use someone like you to persuade Quince to stay and to make my cats feel safe.”
Fleck was already to far away to shout back her answer to him, but she made a mental note to meet him that night.
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-KittyLover8
© 2013
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