A/N: A million thanks to all who read and review. I'm glad some people are enjoying this, heretical as it is. Thing is, in the actual novels, there are examples, dubious or otherwise, of the Imperium working with pretty much every faction - barring the Tyranids and Chaos. The Tyranids I understand, because they are single-minded in their quest to consume biomass. Chaos, though, is so often portrayed as one-dimensional and has a frustrating tendency to dip into Stupid Evil.
So I thought of Marrlë, a Khornate with a code of honour who just wants to have a grand old romp through the 42nd millennium. Then I wrote about him, and had a lot of fun. Once this story is concluded, I might write another story with Marrlë, if people would like that.
Fun fact: The Death of a Guardsman was going to be titled Marrlë and Me until I changed it at the last minute.
"Well, this was unexpected," said Marrlë. Well, he probably said that at some point, because it was really the only thing one could say about our current predicament. Of all the things I had imagined I might get up to in my lifetime, racing a bunch of orks down a mountain on a warbike with a Khornate perched behind the seat firing an autogun with one hand and brandishing a chainaxe with his other while a tank-sized ball that seemed to consist mainly of a gigantic mouth with teeth to match bounded after us was not one of them.
Only a few hours prior to that, we had been hot on the trail left by the crew of the Aquila Lander, setting a brisk pace along the ridge of the mountain. The tracks faded intermittently, concealed by dust or wind, and we had to guess where they'd begin again. Thankfully, thus far we had been lucky, and were still assiduously on the hunt when the dust began to kick up from the mountainside in great clouds, sweeping into our eyes as the wind began to howl. We looked down on the land below, and saw a wave of dust boiling across the plain towards us. "Dust storm," Marrlë said, quite unnecessarily, and I pursed my lips in frustration. If that swept over us, not only would our progress be halted entirely, but the tracks themselves would be irretrievably lost, and we would be left standing like idiots on the ridge. It quickly became clear that Armatura and its dust storm cared nothing for our progress, as the wave of dust crashed into us, along with the fierce wind that bore it, nearly knocking me off my feet. I screwed my eyes shut and clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, while the grit in the wind tore at my flak vest and what little of my skin it could reach. Through the roar in my ears I could faintly hear Marrlë's distinctive gravelly voice calling out for me. I barked something incoherent in response, and though it was somewhat muffled by the hand over my mouth, I suppose it must have reached him, because he called again, with more purpose this time.
"Fenwick! Follow my voice!" I tried to answer him, but dust poured into my lungs and sent me into a coughing fit. Even so, I managed to stay on my feet, and began slogging in the direction I thought his voice was coming from. His calls grew louder, and I knew that I wasn't going the wrong way. When it seemed as if Marrlë's yells were coming from right next to me, I blindly reached out my arm and felt a hand close around my wrist. It sharply yanked me forwards, making me stumble in the direction I was being pulled, and suddenly the dust scoring across my face was gone – or at least, it was no longer striking me. "Open your eyes," Marrlë said, relinquishing his grip on my wrist, and I cautiously did.
We were in a small metal tunnel, angled downwards and leading further down into the mountain. A pile of rubble lay at the opening, and I realized that the mouth of the tunnel had been covered up. When the dust storm kicked up, Marrlë must've stumbled against it and accidentally broken the weak barrier concealing this tunnel from… from who? My mind turned to the underground passage we had used to escape from the base, and wondered if there was a connection there. Evidently, Marrlë was wondering no such thing; he stood leaning against the wall, watching the storm outside rage on. Even from here, I could see the desire for vengeance burning in his eye, and felt a chill run down my spine. It wasn't as if I didn't want to avenge Thurion as well – quite the opposite – but it was different with Marrlë. He spoke little and smiled less, and what few words he did utter rang with barely restrained fury. That single-minded desire was devouring him from the inside, and if it continued to do so, I could only wonder at what would become of his mind. When all that was left was rage, would he recognize me still? The followers of Khorne were not called berzerkers without reason.
Feeling it best to leave him to his own pondering for the moment, I got to my feet, scraped the dust from my flak armour and gingerly headed down the tunnel, intent on seeing what lay beyond. If I found myself enshrouded in total darkness, or perceived some sort of danger, I resolved to retreat, but curiosity was currently overcoming any trepidation I had. My footsteps echoed through the metal passage as I descended deeper into the earth, squinting to make out what lay ahead. The further I continued downwards, the further the tunnel widened, until it was less of a tunnel and more of a hall. I noticed too that the ground had leveled out, and when I looked down, saw strange patterns carven into the metal under my boots. I kept my eyes on these for a moment, so when I looked up, I nearly jumped in fright. Staring back at me, not two metres away was a skull – only, half of it was covered in wires and bionics, and one of its eyes was a glowing red augmetic.
I blinked, and chuckled to myself as I relaxed; the skull was part of a pattern laid into the wall before me. Upon closer inspection, it revealed a great deal more than that: around the skull was a mark not unlike the ridged outside of a gear, and down the middle of the wall ran a thin line, suggesting that this wall was intended to open somehow. Again, I was no expert on the Imperium's more esoteric organizations, but I knew enough to recognize the heraldry of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Several questions boiled into my mind at once, pushing at each other to claim my immediate attention. What were tech-priests doing on Armatura? Had they been the ones to man the military base before us? Were any of them still alive? In the end, the question that won out was: if the wall in front of me was in truth a door, what lay behind it? Against my better judgement, I reached out to touch the bionic skull symbol; just before my fingers made contact with the metal, a harsh bellow echoed down the tunnel, startling me and causing me to stop short.
"Fenwick! Come up, the storm stopped!"
So soon? I wondered as I turned away from the vaguely unsettling leer of the Mechanicus icon and picked my way back up the tunnel. Armatura's weather wasn't usually so fickle; the dust-choked atmosphere rarely yielded rain, and when dust storms occasionally blew up, they tended to last for hours. Thinking of the storms brought back memories of indoor practical lessons in equipment maintenance from Damantin, inane conversations with Marrlë, and the dizzyingly sweet aroma that Rosie left wherever she passed. A lump welled up in my throat, and I forced myself to push aside those memories and focus on the present. Logic dictated that I should have been happy to part with a Chaos Space Marine and his daemonic minion, but trying to think that way left me feeling hollow and dishonest, so I simply tried to think of them as little as I could. Of course, this was easier said than done, but fortunately there were other matters pressing on my mind at the moment. Such as whether or not my Khornate companion would end up going mad with rage and tearing my spine out, if the orks didn't beat him to it.
I found that companion of mine waiting outside of the tunnel, his crimson hair blowing in the breeze. He was leaning on Gorelady, the weapon's long, cloth-bound haft reaching all the way from his shoulder to the ground, and I once again marveled at the ease with which he carried and wielded the huge weapon. Did that strength come from the Dark God he served, or was it all his own?
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Marrlë had caught me staring at Gorelady, and the corners of his mouth curved upwards in a shadow of a smile, patting the vicious-looking axe's head. Not for the first time, I thought I heard the weapon purr contentedly, but decided not to ask him about it. The further the conversation went from hacking things to pieces, the better. Instead, I nodded in agreement, and then called in an old promise he had made.
"Speaking of beautiful things – you promised you'd tell me about that Interrogator lady if we survived, remember? Well, here we both are."
He actually laughed out loud. "Beautiful, huh? That Radical Dame is a lot of things, but I don't know if beautiful is a word most people would use to describe her. I mean, I've always thought she's a stunner, but if you're the type to swoon at a Daemonette's mug, I doubt you'd think so too." He realized his mistake a moment after he'd said it, and punched me lightly in the shoulder. "Hey, you know I didn't mean it that way."
"Yeah, I know." I sighed, trying to erase the frown that had crept over my features. There was no escaping it now – Rosie's impossibly beautiful face slid into the forefront of my thoughts. Closing my eyes and shaking my head, I motioned impatiently. "Never mind that. Tell me about your girlfriend the Interrogator."
"She's not my – hold on, do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" The only sound I could discern was the wind sweeping up the side of the mountain, but I trusted Marrlë's hearing more than my own. He could see much farther than a normal human, so it stood to reason he had auditory abilities to match. I watched him as he stood stock still, chin lifted as his eye roved back and forth. Eventually, he picked out a location and turned to face the unseen source of the sound.
"From over the ridge. Approaching quickly – machines of some kind, I think." I nodded, quickly readying my forearm-mounted bolt pistol and pulling my combat knife from the sheath on my leg. I could hear it now, too: the faint rumble of machines, engines roaring away, and climbing. Whatever it was was ascending the other side of the mountain at a tremendous pace, and as the noise grew ever closer, I thought it sounded familiar. Marrlë recognized it before I could, and readied Gorelady, a blood-hungry snarl on his face. "Warbikes."
Barely a second after he'd spoken, the first ork warbike sailed into view, flying over the ridge and crashing heavily down between Marrlë and me. Even through the jarring of the impact and the roar of its still-living motor, I couldn't help but notice that its rider was missing from the waist up. A pair of meaty green hands still clung to the handlebars, and stubby legs were still dangling resolutely from either side of the seat, but most of the ork was missing, seemingly torn off by something with very… large… teeth. I blinked, and suddenly they were falling all around us – orks on warbikes, yelling in their crude, throaty language. Somehow, they sounded at once panicked and ecstatic, and as the last warbike roared over the ridge, the reason for that became apparent. The bike seemed to hang there for a moment, before vehicle and rider were snagged out of the air and slammed to the ground by the monstrous creature that had come over the ridge. It was a squig, but bigger than any squig I'd ever seen, standing over three times my height and with teeth longer than my entire arm. It put these teeth to grisly purpose as it tore into the ork pinned below its legs, which seemed too thin and stubby to properly support the mass of flesh and teeth they carried, but when its six eyes fixed on me, I decided I wasn't about to test that theory. If the giant squig had been able to keep pace with these orks on their warbikes, Marrlë and I didn't stand a chance on foot – especially not with my leg, which had yet to completely heal.
So naturally, I did the only thing I could: shoved the remaining half of the ork off the bike and got on in its place. Marrlë, who had been eagerly revving his chainaxe, now looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Once again, I myself wasn't sure of whether I had or not, but now was not the time to concern myself with such trivial things as sanity. I beckoned frantically. "What're you waiting for? Get on!" Electing not to question this course of action by virtue of the enormous predator now bounding towards us, Marrlë leapt onto the back of the bike as I searched for a way to turn the thing on. My eyes widened in horrified despair when I saw that there were no controls. The dashboard was a blank slate of metal.
"What're you waiting for?!" Marrlë shouted as the squig bounded closer.
"Nothing!" I yelled back. In desperation, I pounded my fist into the blank dashboard, and as if by magic, the warbike roared to life, black fumes erupting from its exhaust pipes. I had a moment to be exasperated with the orks' mind-boggling approach to technology before it suddenly ripped forwards, sending the two of us rocketing down the mountainside towards the other orks while the squig's oversized jaws snapped shut on the empty air where our heads had been a half-second ago. With a frustrated squeal, it began leaping after us, and Marrlë thumped me on the shoulder as it approached with speed belying those ridiculous legs that bore it. "Faster, dammit!" I felt my backpack shift around as he pulled out my autogun and, twisting his torso at an awkward angle, tried shooting our spherical pursuer. Between the increasing speed of the warbike and his already-terrible aim, he didn't achieve much.
"I don't know how to make it go faster!" I protested, but my gripes were drowned in the obnoxious roar of the bike's motor. The thing was shuddering so much it felt like we were driving through an earthquake. As we pulled closer to the other warbikes, one of their riders looked back and gaped in confusion as it saw two humans racing down the mountain on an ork bike.
"You'z tryin' ta go fasta den da orks, 'umie git?" it bellowed, audible even over the combined screeching of all the unstable motors. I couldn't shout that loud even if I had wanted to respond to that. Apparently, it didn't need an answer; the ork turned its head and roared to its fellow riders: "Da 'umiez be tryin' ta go fasta den us, ladz! Let's give 'em a good showin'!" The other Driva Boyz hooted in agreement, and as one, all of the bikes began to go faster, gaining speed until the ground was going by so quickly that it just became an indistinct blur of colour. I looked down incredulously at the green fists still stubbornly clenched around the handlebars, which appeared to have enthusiastically tightened their grip. The orks had seemingly forgotten about the hungry beast pursuing them, and were now only concerned with going 'fasta' than us. The self-appointed spokesman now laughed and pointed at my bike. "Ya git! Don't ya know da red wunz always go fasta? You'z good az ded, 'umie!"
"Huh?" The only constant in the blur all around me was the other bikes. I noticed now that the others were, indeed, all painted a blistering red colour. Sparing a tiny moment to look down at my own, I saw that my bike was in fact painted blue. This meant little to me, until I recalled one of Damantin's lessons.
Ork technology works because they believe it does.
Oh. By that same insane logic, then, their red bikes would actually go faster than my blue one, because they thought that was how colours worked. "Um, Fenwick?" came Marrlë's yell. When I didn't answer, he went on: "It's catching up."
"What?!" We must've been going at least a hundred miles an hour. I briefly twisted my head to see if what Marrlë said was true, and yelped in alarm and turned my now bone-white face back to the blurring mountainside. Impossible as it seemed, the giant squig's mighty leaps were not only allowing it to keep pace with us, but for it to slowly gain ground. Each push of those inadequate-looking legs took it several dozen feet forwards, its long tongue lolling out of its slavering maw as it anticipated the feast to come. I was about to make my peace with the Emperor when the ground began to level out, and our bike shot forwards in one final burst of speed. Some of the others, unbalanced by their downwards rush, met the even ground at a bad angle and crumpled like cans, or exploded in bursts of flesh and metal. The wind tugged at my face, and dust flew into my eyes; when I screwed them shut and lifted a hand to wipe away the grit, the bike swerved wildly, narrowly avoiding a rather large rock which another bike immediately slammed into. The squig simply leapt over the obstacle and continued bounding after us. Now that it was almost upon us, and with the other bikes being further ahead, I really was about to just let go of the handlebars and make the Aquila sign, but it seemed the universe was not content to let me die just yet.
From out of the dust, the unmistakable howl of bolter fire clashed with the roar of the warbike's motor; the squig hot on our heels suddenly let out a screech of pain and toppled over, its body riddled with deadly bolt rounds. The orks ahead of us, hooting victoriously at having beaten us down the mountain, perished mid-laugh, their heads all exploding at once. Bolter fire continued blazing through the thick dust at us, but we were still carried by the momentum of our descent, and so narrowly outpaced it. Suddenly aware that whoever was firing the bolter was the person we were looking for, I wrenched the warbike into a curve, circling the unseen marksman as they tracked us by the sound of our motor. Gathering air into my lungs, I yelled as loud as I possibly could, and finally overcame the chugging motor: "Wait!"
The bolter ceased firing as my shout reached them. While I wrestled with the bike's temperamental handlebars, trying to guide us safely across the rocky foothills and vainly searching for some kind of braking mechanism, Marrlë peered through the dust, trying to make out exactly who we were dealing with here. When I finally managed to grind the vehicle to a halt, he hopped off the back, remarkably steady on his feet considering the ordeal we had just undergone, and began brazenly moving towards the source of the shooting. I had just gotten off the bike and was struggling to keep my knees from buckling when an authoritative bark rang out through the foothills. "Come forth, in the name of the Emperor!"
For a moment, I thought Marrlë would spit some sort of heretical retort, but instead I saw him stop, and his one good eye widen. Without any further hesitation, he walked into the dust, and I hastily stumbled after him, cursing the weakness in my legs. Four shapes loomed before us, increasing in clarity as we drew closer, until I could make out their features. A white-haired woman with a fleur-de-lys tattooed on her cheek was glaring at my companion with eyes that could pierce the hull of a tank, a bolter cradled in her arms. To her right, a red-robed man covered from head to toe in augmetics spun his power axe and, with a whirr, turned his head to face us. Further back, a thin man was doubled over, panting as crackling psychic energy slowly faded from the air around him. Closest to us was the one who had spoken, dressed in a long black coat: a scar-faced, hawk-nosed, thin-lipped woman on the cusp of her middle years, and whom Marrlë was looking at as if he had come across a ghost. To my confusion, that look was mirrored on her face.
"Marrlë?" she said, her harsh voice thick with disbelief. The Khornate grinned from ear to ear and turned to me.
"That's her, Fen," he whispered, loud enough for everyone present to hear. "She's That Radical Dame."
