Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 109
Night stole over the front line, draping a velvet shawl over Tellaris. Moonless and cloudless, cold and stark, and yet far from empty. Constant artillery booms rang along the fourteen thousand kilometres, Terrans exchanging shells with the rebel lines. Explosions blasted trenches and dug-outs, killing hundreds every minute. Here and there void shields crackled over important installations, but they were few and most men had to trust dumb luck to survive. Fate was rarely so kind.
Near the Bleached Sea an aquatic attack force drove across the waves, risking the minefields to insert veterans onto the shoreline. None made it, detonations ripped their landing boats to splinters and those handful who set foot on land were gunned down by entrenched pillboxs on the clifftops. Near the Rad Wastes a gas attack claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, killing slowly with bitter, caustic fumes. It scarcely mattered who started the barrage, for the other side responded in minutes, coating a hundred-kilometre stretch of the trenches in an impassable toxic cloud. Near the centre a swift foray by fresh air units pressed the attack. They'd been brought down to the planet less than two days before and the pilots died before having time to unpack their gear, just another statistic in the endless tally of war. Whispers told that the Tellarites were crumbling, their will unravelling, but if it was true then nobody on the line saw any evidence of it.
Damchak found the activity most helpful. The Smoke Jaguar stalked the busy conurbations behind the lines, stealing between cover in quick flurries of movement. From mess hall to asupex station to Prayer-tent he stole, unseen by all. The distant flashes of shells detonating cast long shadows for him to hide in and the rolling thunder hid the noise of his footsteps. It was scarcely needed, he was deep in his Shadow-path, drawing on his innate skills to pass unseen. This night deeds would be performed that none could know, his task the first step on the road of revenge.
Damchak grimaced as Nizca clattered in beside him. They were lurking behind a latrine, the noise of urination and drunken guffaws echoing loudly. In that din the scuff of a Ceramite boot against a loose stone seemed trivial, but for a Smoke Jaguar it was amateurish. The youth had spirit but his skills were blunt, he had a lot to learn about the mysteries of night.
Damchak sub-vocalised over a secure vox channel, "You blunder like an Orruk!"
"Shame I deserve," Nizca accepted.
"Penitent ye may be, but silence I desire!"
"The Prowlmaster speaks and I obey."
Damchak's eyes tracked a pair of drunken men stumbling from the latrine, heading off into the night. They stank of cheap rotgut and piss, their footsteps so wayward it was surprising they found the ground. Those at the front could not dream of rest, but further behind the line there was time for the spirit to brood. Those who lived through the horror of the trenches could scarcely stand to think they would soon return, and so sought oblivion in a bottle.
"Quickly, before they get away," Nizca urged.
"Stay your wroth," Damchak chided, "They will not serve."
"But our chance slips away."
"One too tall, the other too fat, these are not our prey."
The Smoke Jaguars settled back, awaiting a more ripe victim. Damchak flexed his claw but did not light it, this hunt demanded a delicate hand, a murder soft as midnight and gentle as mother's love. No rending as tearing as if battling Orruk, subtly and a light step would serve them better than a thousand bellowing challenges. As the Testimony taught, the perfect war was one that could be won with a single shot.
Nizca's helm was outlined by a distant explosion as he mused, "First, where are our Kinsmen?"
Damchak explained, "Bone Gnawer Prowl moves to acquire the materials we require, the tools and cloth of deception. Night Caller and Ghost Cry maintain the illusion of our presence before the Ravens, masking our lack of numbers with ribald taunts."
"And the Eldest?"
"Aapo rests. The living-dead require solitude often, the passing of centuries is most wearing."
Nizca's helm tilted, "I heard a sorrowful tale from a Raven Guard. They say that around the spire tops of Terra resides a great bell, black as the void between stars and marked with fell runes. When it rings all within earshot must shelter, for the weight of its tolling would crush the bones of a grown man. They say this bell rings only by the will of the Golden Throne, as a token of His esteem for the worthy. The Bell of Lost Souls brings tears to the eyes of millions with every peal, for it marks the ending of greatness. I wonder if it shall ring for the Smoke Jaguars?"
Damchak's head turned slowly, "You think this war will be our ending?"
"We tread a perilous course," Nizca confessed, "We hunt the Sun-Emperor's serviles."
"These men are the property of Marcher and he gives scant fealty to the Master of a Millon Worlds," Damchak hissed.
"But they are trothed to Terra. Marcher's death is justice, but if we kill the innocent are we not evil?"
Damchak scowled, "Necessary evil do we enact this night. Aapo tells us that we must embrace both sides of our souls, justice and vengeance. Justice is a measured thing, it has bounds, it began with Abizil's death and ends with Marcher's. Not so vengeance. Revenge grows with time, it encompasses all, no matter to whom they bow. Vengeance has no bounds; it cannot be constrained and none can escape its hungering."
Nizca switched languages, "Far from the bones of our ancestors are we."
Damchak agreed, "Ithzal, his eyes wet at the gloaming."
"The far stars call and we answer?"
"Blood demands blood."
Sadly Nizca accepted that their course was unwavering, "The sun sets on all men."
A scuff behind the latrine caught his eye and Damchak peered around the corner. A knot of burly men were closing, clinging to each other in a stupor of drunkenness. Their fatigues were shabby, their hands scarred. They had seen true fighting, perhaps they had even fought the Heathens on the day Damchak first trod the mud of this world. Were they comrades in arms, leal souls who had given their all, the thought gave him pause. Damchak's left hand brushed the shrunken head of Abizil hanging from his belt and he resolved that it mattered not. Marcher's death demanded evil deeds, to shirk from that was to declare himself no true son of Sedaxus.
Damchak gestured and Nizca peeled off, circling to the other side of the latrine. Damchak eyed the party. One man was tall, broad of shoulder and straight of back. This was the one they had been waiting for, his death would begin the cascade of pebbles that would grow into an avalanche of revenge.
Five men staggered into the latrine and Damchak struck from the shadows. The first knuckle of his middle finger rammed a man in the spine, shattering a spinal cord. He eschewed the full use of his fist, the blow of an Astartes was distinctive and would leave signs of the Smoke Jaguars upon the bodies, this was not acceptable. The first man collapsed with a broken neck and the other four whipped about. Despite their alcoholic torpor they were born fighters and on a hair trigger, nerves taut by a lifetime of danger. Burly arms, blunt faces and a scent of wild jungle and deadly danger clung to them. They had serrated knives at their hips and drew them in steady hands, but Damchak was a Space Marine and they were not.
A snarling man with a red bandanna thrust at the dark blur in the night, only to find his wrist encased in a gigantic claw. The Guardsman's eyes bulged in disbelief as his arm was pinned, biceps straining to no avail. Damchak could have shattered the arm with a flick of his talons but was more precise than that. He inched forward and applied pressure, bending the arm backwards. The Guardsman gawped at the display, powerless as a newborn to resist. A rotation of the wrist and the long knife was suddenly pointing backwards, before sinking into the man's guts, impaling him on his own knife.
Brave were his comrades, they did not flinch at the deaths of two of their own but came forward with knives in hand. Before they could land a blow Nizca loomed from the rear, his arm snaking about the throat of another man. The Smoke Jaguar squeezed tight and lifted a six-foot brute off the ground, pulling him tight and snapping his neck with a neat click of vertebrae snapping. The other two had a choice to continue the attack or turn to find who was behind, they chose the path of bravado.
"Catachan 701st!" one man roared as he swung wide.
Damchak leaned back and let the blow swing past, "You fight like a grot!"
"Swift as a lash-mamba! Sharp as a spineleaf! Stubborn as a Grox!" the man bellowed as he stabbed again.
Damchak had had enough. His claw flickered, brushing the soldier's throat with the tip of a finger. The jugular artery was neatly severed and the man went down, fountaining blood. He flopped on the ground, hands beating at his gushing neck but he could not stop death from claiming him. Soon his eyes would see no more, but Damchak had other matters to attend first. He thrust his left arm out fast as starlight in space and wrapped his hand around the final prey's neck.
The last soldier did not panic, he stabbed for the gut, only for his knife to skitter off Ceramite plate. Annoyed Damchak hoisted him aloft, squeezing the gauntlet like a vice. The instinct to snap this one's neck was fierce, the urge to tear his face off broiling, but he held himself back, using just enough pressure to close the windpipe without crushing the neck.
Damchak leaned in close to whisper, "Courage flows in your veins. Your life you gave up for duty, your death I claim in service of a higher cause."
"G..." the struggling man hissed.
"You carry the scent of a jungle-born. In another time and place we could have been friends, but what must be, must be. I shall remember you to the end of my days, and your spirit will endure, that is my gift to you."
The man's struggles grew feeble, his legs jerked a few times then went still and his face became slack. Still Damchak held firm, ensuring no deception was occurring. When the man's bladder emptied in death the Smoke Jaguar knew he was gone and the deed was done. He drew the corpse close to his chest and picked up the legs, carrying the body like a sleeping child. Nizca stooped to rearrange the rest of the corpses, painting a scene of brawling drunks with blood and cadavers. The next soul to appear would find only a group of Guardsmen fighting to the death in some drink-fuelled squabble, killing each other over nothing. A mad scene, but then no one would note one more act of insanity in the pandemonium that was war.
Murdering done the Smoke Jaguars withdrew, leaving the scene of the crime behind. Damchak's hearts harboured a scintilla of guilt but it was swept aside in a surge of smug accomplishment. Abizil's death was one step closer to being avenged, and Marcher's time of reckoning would soon be upon him.