Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 125
"Let me out of here!" the lone voice rang out of the narrow window slit, "I am Lord Militant Marcher! I demand to be set free!" It was useless, nobody was listening, his voice echoed off the distant cliffs, with no sign anyone could hear. Frustrated the naked man beat his hands on the rock, one soft and fleshy, the other dull metal. He'd been doing this for days but nobody listened, or worse they listened and ignored his shouting. In all his life Marcher had never been ignored, from birth maids and teachers cowered before his tantrums, too terrified of his family wealth to discipline him. Marcher was most assured not used to being told no, and he cared not for the experience of denial.
Filled with ire he turned and stomped to the far wall, every other step ringing from the metal clomp of his foot. The cell was small, and lit only by a narrow arrowslit that let a single beam of light traverse the room. The walls were bare stone, annoying hard, as his attempts to use his Augmetic hand to carve an escape had proved. Twice a day a cup of stale water and a bowl of grubs and worms was shoved through a small hatch in the stone door. Marcher had taken a whole day to realise this was rations, and another day for hunger to overcome his distaste for the wriggling insects. Even the toilet was degrading, a hole in the corner, barely big enough to manage his waste.
For the millionth time Marcher cursed the Adeptus Astartes. Those glory hogs who had swooped in and stolen his victory. The Transhuman freaks had always had it in for him, from the day they abandoned him in battle, to this humiliating captivity. They were jealous, that had to be it, jealous of his power and position. They craved his authority and since they couldn't take it from him had decided to snatch him away instead. He couldn't think of any other reason they would have kidnapped him.
His bitter diatribe was cut short as the door swung open. Marcher blinked in surprise as a Space Marine stepped into the room, followed by a mortal man in fine Imperial attire. Marcher recognised the Astartes, Damchak the Smoke Jaguar commander, the one who had kidnapped him. The mortal man was an unfamiliar face, but the way he carried himself spoke of adventure and rakish deeds. That was an opportunity.
"Finally!" Marcher spat as he crossed his arms, "I demand to be released at once!"
"Reah, Justen Goth Dos!" Damchak spat.
"What?!" Marcher spat.
The man grinned, "He says you are in no position to demand anything. That's not an exact translation of course, just the gist."
"You, who are you?!" Marcher spat.
"Rogue Trader Crovin, very much not at your service."
"Tell him to let me go!"
"I'm not in charge here, Damchak is and he understands you perfectly, he just doesn't want to dignify you with an answer."
The Space Marine growled, "Thrus Poko Maba Grenda!"
Crovin sucked in a breath through gritted teeth, "He says… well better not to get into the details, but it involves gnawer grubs and your toes."
"Grenda!"
"Sorry, my mistake… your genitals."
Suddenly the Space Marine lurched forward and wrapped a Ceramite gauntlet about his arm. Marcher was nearly yanked off his feet as he was dragged out of the cell, then frog-marched down stone corridors with his shoulder nearly dislocated. Attempts to break loose were laughable, as futile as a toddler trying to escape a parent's grip. All Marcher could do was trot along, unable to fight in the slightest degree.
Desperately he gasped, "Crovin! Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it!"
"Prisoners don't carry much coinage," Crovin scoffed.
"But my family is rich! I'll reward you handsomely, trust me!"
Crovin snorted, "Trust you?! I trust that you'll double-cross me at the first chance. You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest."
Their frog-marched walk brought them to a larger room, with an open doorway at the far end. Between him and freedom stood a hundred Space Marines, with bolters raised. They slapped them hard as he entered, in a slow rhythm, like the beating of a giant heart. Marcher froze in dread, but the hand forced him on, dragging him towards the open door. He could see the world outside, so tempting he could taste it, but surely they would kill him first.
"Why are you doing this?!" Marcher yelled in panic.
Damchak paused and yanked him about, finally saying, "Vengeance!"
"For what?!"
"My blood-brother's shade cannot rest until the scales of justice are made level."
"But that was war," Marcher gulped.
"Abizil's death lies upon your head and I Damchak burn to extract the bloodprice. Yet I trothed none of my Kinsmen shall murder you. So we turn to the older ways, the ways of Sedaxus. You shall run and I shall hunt. A fair chance shall you enjoy, not murder, not at all."
"You have weapons, you have armour!"
"You had planes, you had bombs," Damchak retorted, "But one boon shall be your grace."
"What boon?" Marcher gulped.
Damchak leaned down to stare into his eyes, pale features predatory and cruel, "A five-minute head start."
The giant hand shoved Marcher through the doorway and he fell onto a steep slope. Momentum saw him tumbling head over heels, naked skin cut and bruised by sharp rocks. He skittered to a halt, blood trickling from a score of cuts, but instantly was on his feet and running. For all his pampered upbringing he'd never shirked from a fight, he'd been at the sharp end of battle many times and risked his life for glory. Instincts of a hundred battlefields compelled him to flee and he did so, though his naked foot was torn and bruised without a decent boot.
He'd been thrown out of a door in a high mountain, but below lurked the inviting darkness of a dense jungle. Marcher was no woodsman but favoured his chances of escape in the twilight underbrush over running exposed across hilltops, so headed directly for it. Into the darkness he plunged, to be smothered by a blanket of raw heat. The crisp wind that had cooled him above was denied, leaving him sweating profusely. His heart beat rapidly and his tongue became dry, but Marcher pressed on, trying to lose himself in the tangled shadows. Wet air coated him in sweat, hanging vines slapped his face and the brush underfoot hid many sharp twigs and thorns, but to stay was to die.
He knew not how long he ran but when his good thigh cramped and his lungs rasped he paused to take stock. He leaned on a tree and gasped for air, reviewing his situation. Naked on an unknown world, chased by an Astartes out for his head. The chances of living to nightfall were slim. Even if he did last a day or two he had open wounds that could become infected and no knowledge of what plants were edible and which were poisonous. An execution this was, he reflected bitterly, just made slower by letting the elements do it instead of their own hand. Cowards, Marcher spat, these Smoke Jaguars were cowards. Well he would show them, he'd survive, he'd get off this planet and come back with an army to raze it to the bedrock.
A motion in the corner of his eye made him start, something massive had just flitted from bough to bough, keeping to the shadows. He was running before his conscious mind registered it, bursting through hanging vines and bouncing off mossy trunks. Surely Damchak couldn't have found him already, his slow thoughts protested, but then this was the Smoke Jaguar's world and he was the outsider.
He ran headlong into the dark, only to see something looming dead ahead. Desperately he dove right, wondering how the hell something as massive as a Space Marine could have got ahead of him unnoticed. He went face-first into a thick cobweb and cursed as a many-legged thing skittered off his metal shoulder. Into a freezing mountain stream and out the other side, his flesh-leg emerging covered in leeches that sucked greedily on blood. He dared not pause as a flash of Ceramite in the gloom revealed his pursuer, barely a few steps behind.
Marcher ran, unable to stop, unable to break away. A small thought at the back of his mind growled that Damchak could have shot him in the back at any moment. The Smoke Jaguar was drawing this out, prolonging the torment, making sport of his weakness. The cur wanted Marcher to be afraid, but he refused. The Lord Militant was angry, riding a tide of outrage and contempt. If they wanted to terrorise him then they had failed, he would deny them that pleasure at the very least.
Marcher ran into a copse of dense trees and out the other side, then squeezed through a split trunk and jumped a fallen bough. He paused for a moment, lungs rasping, looking for Damchak in the shadows. To his surprise there was nothing, no hint of Ceramite, no lurking figure chasing him. That wasn't right, he had to be here, the hunter would not abandon this chase. Yet there was nothing, only shadows, slinking oily darkness, growing nearer, moving to surround him.
Marcher backed off, shoulders hitting a thick trunk. Red-shelled insects crawled onto his skin and bit at soft flesh but he didn't care. The shadows were alive, inching nearer, swelling and falling like living things. His anger ebbed as terror took hold, fear not of bullet and blade but of the unknown horror creeping nearer. Marcher saw faces and eldritch shapes in the living gloom, each a visage torn from his worst nightmares. This wasn't natural, this was something beyond the ken of the human mind, something Daemonic.
Marcher's courage snapped and he turned to flee in mindless terror, but a blur came out of nowhere and struck hard. He tumbled to the brush, stunned by the impact of something he could not even see. He tried to rise, but then found his Augmetic leg had been ripped in half, so fast and sudden he hadn't even felt it. The truncated end sparked from shorn wires but the cut was clean, whatever had attacked him was sharp as monofilament wire. Fat tears blurred his organic eye, a child's tears sobbing in the night at imagined horrors, but this was no dream.
Marcher got to his hands and knee, shuffling on three limbs like a cripple. Another blur and his augmetic arm was gone, cut above the elbow so fast he didn't see the attacker, even Space Marines weren't that fast. He rolled helplessly in the brush, wailing in fright, all his courage draining to nothing. He was made pathetic, reduced to a baby, past glory barely a memory and his pride ashes. Lord Militant Marcher, the splendiferous conqueror of the Tellarite Rebellion, crawling amongst the roots like the lowest of bugs. An insect waiting to be crushed by a callous boot.
He managed to grab a thick root and roll over, kicking his one heel to push upright against a tree trunk. The shadows were thick and resisted all attempts of his augmetic eye to penetrate, but something solid moved nearer. His heart thundered and terror sweat poured off him as his bladder emptied itself. The shadows parted and he held a hulking beast. Shoulders broad as a Rhino tank, claws sharp as a Callidus Phase sword and dappled fur that rippled like oil on water as the beast moved. The head was feline in shape, with slitted yellow eyes and whiskers tough as razorwire. The fangs sticking out its gums hung well past the lips, huge sabre-tusks each as long as his forearm. There was something unnatural about this predator, an aura of dread rising like a heat haze. The physical aspect was the least of its being, the shadows were a part of it too, a psionic cloud of dismay that coiled and slithered according to its whim. Marcher found himself confronted by a Smoke Jaguar, not the order of Astartes that adopted the name, but the true beast itself, the apex predator of Copan XII, lord of the jungle, unrivalled and unequalled.
"No…. no… no…" Marcher gasped as his lone leg kicked uselessly at the brambles. The Smoke Jaguar remained silent, staring hungrily at this morsel that had stumbled into its hunting grounds. The scent of blood and fear had been tempting indeed, and it was not about to let this feast go, any more than a cat would a mouse caught in its paws. The heady nectar of terror nourished its soul, but soft meat and hot blood tempted its tongue more.
Marcher waved his one arm desperately in the air and pleaded, "Please, Throne, please, please!" A blur of motion, the flash of a red maw opening and the snapping of fangs. Blood painted the tree trunk as the apex predator pounced, claiming the hunt-kill in an orgy of consumption. Marcher's life ended in ignominy, a Lord Militant who once strode the stars devoured by a jungle predator, begging and pissing himself like the meanest wretch. Marcher's glory had come to naught and Damchak watched from the shadows, satisfied justice and vengeance had both been satisfied. He had sworn Marcher would not die by the hand of a Smoke Jaguar, but he'd never said anything about fangs.