Title: Intruders

Author: Scylla the Healer

Fandom: Birth of the Firebringer – prehistory

Rating: PG-13

This story ties in with another FT fandom story written by DT Maxwell called "Dark Side of the Moon." I'd highly suggest giving it a look! However, my fiction is not directly tied with hers – the scenario is basically the same, but events here are merely a 'what if' dance outside the perameters of time and space. This takes place years and years before the first FT book.

As always, Pierce's lovely tale doesn't belong to me, nor does her world, and shall be returned to her keeping at the end of this tale. Arus, however, belongs to the peerless skitz-phenom, and Cadfael is the property of DT Maxwell, and Harm is mine, and Miel is the property of her player, and we shall sting like a thousand wyverns if you steal them.

A torrent of rainbow-hued bodies plunged from the Pan Woods, blue, gray, yellow, amber and red. They broke free of the trees with wild battle-yells, high mares' clarions and stallions' deep-throated bugles. The unicorns had come to clash with one another, brother and sister turned against one another in battle.

King Daral of the Circle, he of the long line of Halla, had fallen prey to an assassin sent by his own son, the thwarted Prince Cadfael. The prince driven away into the tangled heart of the Pan Woods, and taken for Renegade or given up for dead, with no mourners in his wake.

But he was not dead. For long years, the young gray warrior hid in the shade of the close and twisted trees of the Woods; suffered under the burden of knowledge that within his father's eyes, he was hopelessly fallen. A detestable creature for his unorthodox beliefs of the Goddess. But soon his heart hardened over his grief, and what had once been shame grew into cold, calculated hate. Over time, warriors more loyal to the true prince of the unicorns began to drift away of their own volition, and joined him in his exile, preparing for the day that they might return to best the warriors of Daral and claim the throne for their precious leader.

And now the King was dead, the great cycle of war set in motion. Cadfael's half-sister, the young Miel, led the ring of warriors now in her father's stead, and had for only a handful of sorrowful hours.

The assassin – Daral's blood dried on the pale white shaft of his horn – had turned tail following his mission to carry the message of Daral's death back to his mighty War Prince and led a reconnaissance deep into Circle territory. Gray as cloudcover, with paler dapples and hooves and mane…he was a haunt, shifting noiselessly through the undergrowth. He and his warriors were separated when…

"INTRUDER!"

…One of the young Valedwellers discovered him in his cover of brush just opposite the speakers' knoll.

A slate-blue dun, with flashing white feet and crazy-eyed with grief. Another loyal Valedweller, sworn to country and King. Or whatever pile of dust Daral chose to claim as the unicorns' territory. Harm screamed to his scouts to take cover – and of course they did not listen, though thankfully one blessed creature carried the word back to Cadfael that their cover was lost – and charged to meet the aggressor.

"You made a deadly mistake, my friend!"

"'Tis you who have made the error…friend!"

The battle between them was hard and fast and Harm quickly learned that he and his fellow combatant were equals. Frighteningly equal, and an oddly perfect match of skills. How ironic that they had landed on opposite sides of the game. How odd.

"You and your kind will rue the day that they ever thought to murder our king and usurp his throne! We will never see the likes of you in domination over what is rightly ours!"

Harm lost the rest of Arus' words in the haze of adrenaline that settled over him. All that registered was the hate lacing those words, and the anger that radiated from the other stallion's throat.

"All in good time,"

For the hoofslash he managed to land on the warrior's shoulder, he himself was presented with the cut of a horn across the unprotected barrel. A slash that, had the blue dun really thrown his weight into it, could have gutted him. Instead, his skin opened and bleeding vibrant crimson drops in a rivulet down his belly, Harm leapt back. Only to have the brilliant surge of bodies flood around him, others taking up his battle against the unfamiliar warrior, and tearing them apart.

The phantom gray stallion stood, head up, bemused. His eyes – one gold, one blue by the white blaze that balded his face – cast about for a glimpse of his former opponent. No sign. The other had been carried away, as more and more unicorns poured down from the clay cliffs or flew in from all corners of the Vale to join the battle. Harm shook himself free of his stupor and lunged out in search of his missing comrades, saw their bodies flurrying amidst the fray, and joined them in the massive fan the Watchers formed, driving the Valedwellers back. They were fewer, but there was a great difference between the Watchers and the Valedwellers.

Unlike the Circle, the Watchers had nothing to lose.

Blood flowed, and the smell of sweat, fear, and the lust of hate enveloped the battlefield at the verge of the woods as a curtain of fog. Soon, it was nearly impossible to tell his own companions from the beasts that came at him…they swam across his vision despite the seasoned warrior's cool, calculating mind. He couldn't focus! Then, the fighting fell away from his branch of the fan, and he and his fellows were given a brief respite.

Who was that blue dun stallion? His coat fell in spots, bright patches of white against the allover slate of his coat, and white in his mane as though Alma had bitten his crest in punishment for some specious crime. Pale, smoky blue eyes and a blaze that was nearly a match for the assassin's own.

And when he saw the colors through the crush of hooves and flashing skewer-sharp horns, he thrust after his elusive quarry without thought. Only to see a mare, unseen, poised to strike down the strange dun.

No…not strange. Harm blinked with recognition, and charged to shoulder the mare aside. She hissed and stumbled, obviously caught off guard. "Harm!" She cried in shock, "What madness is this!"

"Arus!" He shouted, heedlessly "Arus! Hear me, Arus!" His voice was hoarse from shouting, hardly more than an angry hiss itself. There was little in the maniacal warrior that was capable of caring. Little soul, little heart beyond the pulse of war. But he remember the other stallion. Remembered the comradery of youth, before he had found his calling at Prince Cadfael's side. "Arus! Arus! It's Harm! Harm! Harcor! Don't you remember me?"

"You have gone mad!" The tawny mare at his side hissed, shying away as though he'd struck her. "You wits are addled! I should strike you down where you stand, before you bring harm to our prince!"

Arus, meanwhile, stared at them both as though they were serpents in his path, and wasn't sure as yet which one bore the poisonous fangs. Or whether each waited to strike him. The dusty blue eyes staring out from either side of his blindingly white blaze narrowed, nostrils flared. The fighting had moved away from them. They were almost alone. And Cadfael's troops were winning, slowly working their way through Daral's tattered forces. Whether they swept in to join the kill or the defeat mattered not.

"No…" Harm whispered, "no…he's…he was my friend…" The stallion's unusually high voice squeaked. "Arus…it's Harcor…don't you…"

Too late, Harm remembered that he'd shed his coat in the Woods, and gone from inky dark blue to a charcoal gray over the years. The years that he'd been gone. But his blaze, his eyes…they never changed. They had always stood out in his face, always marked him as destined to be different; set apart from his playmates.

"Harcor?" Arus spat acidly, "Harcor is dead. I refuse to believe that you could be him. His coat was as dark as your soul, to so callously kill the king of the unicorns!" The Valedweller's black-tipped ears laced back against his skull, and he swung his head to Harm's fellow Watcher, tilting his head to expose his throat. "Kill me. My king is dead; my people soon to fall prey to a mad, bloodthirsty prince. I will not—"

"Arus!"

"You have said as much already," Arus said, indifferently, and Harm watched in horror as the Watcher's eyes glinted in anticipation as together they watched the pulse in the slate dun stallion's throat. "what more do you have to add of use?"

Harm's herdmate lunged. He knocked her aside, earning himself a scratch across an already blood-bedewed shoulder, and she fell heavily to her knees. The princess Miel was forced to submit, standing in the shadow of her elder brother and flanked by guards. Her eyes were hard, her jaw set and her young beard bristling as she stared defiantly up from the drop of her head. She was hardly defeated. Would Cadfael murder his own sibling to be sure of the throne? No…Cadfael wasn't that kind of monster…

…He set his Watchers to do the true monstrous work for him. For the good of the cause, yes…but still…

No! I am a warrior at heart. A warrior! I live to fight, on whatever side will have me. A berserker.

Father didn't raise me to be a mindless soldier.

No! I made my decision long ago. The Valedwellers were wrong to drive Cadfael out. Just as they turned their backs on me.

"Is my father still alive?" Harm croaked, head up, shoulders and hips tensed for flight if the other stallion should come at him. It was all that he had left, that and the turn of his head, exposing the pale blue and the gilded yellow eye for what they were. Please remember…

"Harcor. Harcor… No!" The smoky eyes flashed with recognition, and tightened in fury. Arus lunged at him, and Harm spun away in a flurry of legs. "He died while you were in the Woods, training to like the taste of blood! We laid him out beneath the stars while you became a bloodthirsty wolf!"

"Arus, wait!"

"Where were you when he wept? He died believing both his children dead, but no! One was dead, and one a traitor to the crown!" The blue dun feinted at him, white fetlocks flashing as he half-reared and drove the charcoal gray stallion further away from the battlefield. They were consumed with the grisly task of carrying out an age-old ache. An ache that had driven one to stay, and one to go. Harm was given no choice but to flee. The heat of rage in Arus' hooves brooked no argument, even for one of his formidable skill. "Traitor! You may as well be dead!"

"Arus, please…!" Harm stumbled away, new scratches standing out against his hide as he and his pursuer lined out for the haven of the Pan Woods, scrambling up the gentle slope leading away from the valley floor. Harm's ears lay back against his skull, just catching Cadfael barking orders distantly behind them. They were too far away for either to find help in his companions.

It was between them, now.

"Where were you? Where were you?" Arus screamed, slashing at him whenever he tried to halt. Then, they were in the trees, those still tall, branches loose and filtering sunlight through their needles. They were obscured from sight. Finally, Harm veered hard left, and disappeared into the arms of the conifers to lose his would-be captor. Arus pulled up short, ears twitching furiously as he tossed his head from left to right in search of his quarry's footsteps.

The pine trees grew thick here, obscuring the location of those softly thudding steps. Harm had slowed to a walk, sides slick with sweat. It stung in the gash Arus left him only a quarter of an hour before. He circled the other stallion, obscured from his vision by the sprigs of deep green.

They breathed together, their harsh, hollow breaths the only sound in the grove for a time.

At last, Harm spoke. "I followed orders," the tortured voice ghosted through the trees like the haunt himself. Arus' ears snapped wildly after the sound.

"You followed the orders of a beast gone mad! Cadfael lusts after power, not justice!" He retorted.

"He was outcast because he was not the same! He wasn't like all of the rest of you damn moondancers! His own father turned his back!"

"For good reason! What folly has that spiller of lies been telling you?"

"Enough to know my own heart. Listen to me, Arus. When have you ever known me for a fool?"

"The day you left," The slate blue stallion replied sullenly, head weaving after Harm's restless footsteps.

"You and I both know there was more to the reason I left."

"That hardly matters now."

"I say it does!" Harm plunged through the barrier of conifers, pulling hard up, nearly chest to chest with the Vale warrior. His ears were flat back, bicolored eyes dangerous. "Who are you to decide right and wrong?" Harm's teeth bared, and Arus scrambled back to a better defense point. "Who are you to say whose word is truth, and whose, folly? Who are you to say what matters now?" His eyes narrowed. Arus read the meaning there and tossed his head in disbelief.

"But you said…"

"What I said then," Harm replied coolly, circling, "and what I say now are different. I could have let her kill you."

"Yes. Why didn't you?" Arus shot back, hooves scuffing pine needles in a slow pivot, following the pale gray warrior's movements.

There was no answer. Only a huff of breath.

The dun's eyes narrowed. "What, lost your tongue?" He challenged, drawing himself up square, stance shifting in preparation to strike, "Speak. Tell me the truth, traitor, ere I run you through."

Harm's eyes flickered, and he stepped back, turning as he went to slip through the trees. "I lost you once, Arus. I would not willingly lose you again." His voice fluted back softly between the shadow-laden boughs. "Despite that you are already lost to me."

"I thought you never cared about anything. Harcor. Harcor! Where do you think you're going?" Arus plunged after him, filtered sunlight and pine needles pricking his tobiano splotches until his skin twitched. The forest ahead of him seemed deserted. Devoid of unicorns, gray dappled or otherwise. The world seemed a sudden sunless place, and all he wanted to do was escape. "Wait!"

"Why?" The voice came from nowhere, and suddenly Harm was at his shoulder. Pushing. Driving him back down the hill and to their comrades. Arus realized with a sinking guilt that he had no idea what had befallen his companions.

"It is dangerous," He replied, a bit lamely.

"'Tis dangerous down there, too," Harm replied almost congenially with a thrust of his nose in the direction of the valley floor. "especially for you, now."

They said nothing more for a time. Arus found, to his irritation, that Harm refused to allow him out of sight, which was rather necessary, as every soldier of Cadfael regarded him and his as possible enemies still. Miel, he was joyously relieved to see, lived. Healers moved among the fallen, and remarkably, there were few seriously injured, and fewer dead. The tawny mare that had fallen under Harm's hooves was in good health, though she bore a few more scratches than she had before their breakneck drive away from the field.

"There he is!" Cried the mare, pounding up to them and skidding to a stop. Cadfael's head lifted from a quiet murmur to an orderly and followed the mare's cry. The dark gray stallion's ears laced back. Arus had never seen such a painful change in the phantom-hued warrior at his side, even when he'd driven Harm away. The assassin looked for all the world as though he were angrier than any five Cadfaels, and yet his unswerving loyalty to the new king of the unicorns demanded that he genuflect before the larger stallion and accept the responsibility of his actions. Head down, ears twitched back in a show of shame, Harm followed the tawny warrior mare to stand before Cadfael like a chastised nurseling. He knew what was coming.

"There are witnesses," Cadfael began icily, tossing his head first to his left and the silver stallion standing to one shoulder, and then to the yellow dun on the right, and the tawny mare beside Harm stamped in assent, "who say that you abandoned the field. After you struck down one of your comrades. Is this true?"

"I…did not want to see her kill him."

The Watchers looked from him to their king in uncertainty, and back to him. A hush fell over the little assembly, and expectant gazes from all over the immediate area rose. Cadfael's gaze did not lift from the gray dappled stallion before him, whose size seemed to shrink significantly in the face of his king's anger. For though the dark prince was hardly outwardly ruffled…he radiated anger like a killing frost.

"You did not want to see her kill him."

"Yes, your highness."

"One of the folk whom we warred with today."

"Yes, your highness."

"Whose king you slew this morning."

"Yes."

"And you participated willingly in battle?"

"Yes."

"And yet you would not kill this warrior?"

"…No."

Murmurs buzzed around them like bumblebees in clover. The king tossed his forelock behind one ear and glared at the crowd, and they fell silent again. His blue eyes were sober, stern, frosty, and Harm flinched under the weight of his regard.

"Harm. You have been a loyal subject, and a willing aid in my quest to regain my birthright. Had it been anyone else, I would order their execution as we stand here. But you…" His head tilted, an oblique look that Harm prayed was perhaps his saving grace, "I can hardly imagine that you would commit treason, as delicately as you balance between sanity and insanity as it be. And so…I will ask you for the truth. And you have one opportunity to explain your actions. Why did you abandon the field? And why did you injure one of your own to save the enemy?"

His words carried to the edge of the field. Silence fell over the herd, and every ear capable of heeding rounded on him. Including a pair of familiar black tipped blue dun ears, just outside the ring, accompanied by a pair of Harm's very aggressive fellow warriors. Arus. Oh, damn…

The hush was thick, and pressed against his ears. But still…he couldn't speak, though his mind rushed furiously for an answer.

His excuse of old comraderies wouldn't work, here. Here, in the light after the battle, shoulderfriends had fought shoulderfriends. Siblings fell under one another's hooves. Parents and children clashed. Simple friendship of days gone past couldn't cut a good reason why he'd saved Arus' life. Not since Harm had spent almost half of his life with the Watchers. So…why?

Why, indeed?

"Your highness, Cadfael…you have treated me like a brother, and I am undeserving of your loyalty. I did not leave the Vale for you, all those years gone. When I was but a halfgrown, I discovered a part of myself, for which Alma would surely banish me. I fight, not for you, but in the hope that one day death would free me from this torture."

"You make precious little sense," Cadfael replied shortly, "but as there is little to be done but tending the wounded, say on. There is time."

"The truth is…" Harm faltered, and in that brief moment of panic that rarely ever overcame the gray warrior, blue-gray eyes found his. Arus…forgive me… But despite the beseeching apology, the assassin's bi-colored eyes flashed with defiance, and his head rose just a touch. Let them hear it. He was sure of his sin. Let them hear it, and then let the sky fall. "…I love him."

The assembly erupted into chaos. There were shouts, and there were mutterings, gasps of shock and tones of distaste. In desperation, Harm searched the milling crowd in the hopes of finding Arus. To see the result of his confession, damning as it might well be.

He found him. The blue dun stallion's guards had left him, and warrior stared down assassin with an expression of blank shock. Then recollection…

One stone cold heart lifted a little from its bleak hall of desperation. Arus paced deliberately toward him. He was barred by horns crossed before his path, as Cadfael shouted down the speakers and turned to face Harm once more.

"These words are true? You speak no lie before me, but admit a truth that may see you dead in a day's time, my friend."

"They are true, your highness. Some things cannot be controlled."

"Indeed." Cadfael looked away from him then, to Arus. The slate blue stallion's gaze flickered at last from Harm to the king, and though he hid a recoil of distaste, it did not falter. Cadfael studied him a long while, and nodded as though satisfied by what he found there, before raising his voice to address the assembly.

"As my first decree, I will be more magnanimous than was my father before me. All followers of the princess Miel are pardoned. She, however, will remain in my company until otherwise noted. But you…" His gaze turned steely, and fastened on Harm, "for your crimes against the crown, namely abandoning your post, you are banished. Henceforth, you are broken from the Ring, and as you leave, I forbid any to pursue you, on punishment of banishment as well. Begone."

It had never been harder for Cadfael to turn his back on another. He guessed, through some sense of foresight, that he never would again. The silver stallion and the tawny mare exchanged glances, feeling, for some strange reason, that they had just been cheated. But nevertheless, they followed their king.

Harm stared at Cadfael's retreating rump, processing what had just happened.

Arus ghosted up to his side. He didn't register the warrior's presence until a soft, fearful whisper murmured, "so…that was why?"

Harm stepped out swingingly, haunches swaying with a jaunty pride as he started for the edge of the Vale. The Plains were good to unicorns, so he'd heard, as long as he kept his eyes open and his ears pricked for pards.

"Harm?"

No answer.

"Harcor!"

He stopped. Spoke without looking back. "Do you care? If it's true or not? You'd be a fool to follow me. Don't start now."

"It's too late," The dun replied, catching up to his rump, "I already follow you."

Blue and yellow eyes closed for a brief moment as the assassin stifled a chuckle. So much had happened today…and so much he would feel tomorrow. "So you are a fool."

"Perhaps. But better fools together than fools apart."