01.2 - Better the Devil Read online

  For the hundredth time, he let his thoughts drift back three days, to a room on the Tower’s mid-level and his first—his only—face-to-face meeting with Sergeant “Barracuda” Creek. He ran their conversation through his mind, trying to work out what he’d said, what he had done, to raise the other man’s ire, to make him think he deserved this, deserved to have a monster put on his tail.

  “I don’t think you’re ready,” Creek had told him bluntly.

  “But I’ve done all the training,” he’d protested. “I’ve passed your tests. I’ve done everything you asked of me.”

  “Oh yeah, you’ve gone through the motions well enough—but I want more than that, Lorenzo. I want to know there’s fire in your belly.”

  “Fire” was one thing, but this… No one could have expected him to deal with this, to outfight a Devil alone. Not at his young age. Not at any age… And a fierce resolve swelled in Lorenzo at that thought: a resolve to prove himself. To slay the Devil after all, and to march up to the Tower with its tail slung over his shoulder, its carcass dragged behind him. He imagined Creek’s face when he did so: the surprise and the grudging admiration in that spiteful son-of-a-grox’s sunken black eyes.

  Then his thoughts returned to reality. He remembered burning spittle on his face, the whoosh of a death-dealing tail against his back, and the mental picture faded.

  Lorenzo’s wounded right leg chimed in with a mournful throb. He could feel it stiffening. He thought it might have been infected, but there was no point removing the dressing as there was little he could do about it anyway, out here. He could no longer focus through the pain, no longer keep up his accelerated pace, which meant that the Devil—for he knew it was still following him, even if he had detected no sign of it for hours—would be starting to close in.

  Lorenzo thought long and hard before he eased himself into the river. It was another way of masking his trail, of delaying his pursuer, but it would also expose him to untold other dangers, dangers he would be less able to detect in the waist-high water. He knew that reptiles and aquatic rodents concealed themselves in the cracks of the riverbed, and that some types of weed could drag him under in a heartbeat if he stepped on them. And indeed, he had only been wading for a few minutes when he disturbed a small nest of leeches.

  Fortunately, only four younglings were at home, and Lorenzo’s Catachan fang despatched three of them in two strokes, the second thrust lopping off two heads at once. He cursed, however, as he realised that the fourth leech had sunk its circular jaws through the threadbare leather of his damaged boot. He pulled himself onto the bank, and tore the bloated creature painfully from his right heel. He smacked it into the ground so that it burst and showered him with his own stolen blood.

  It was about an hour later that Lorenzo saw the first sign of an altogether more worrying presence. Not that he could have missed it. A moment ago, the foliage around him had grown thick and high, crowding each side of the river; now, suddenly, it fell away to leave him wading through a large, open area.

  Immediately, he knew this was no natural glade, nor had it been cleared by human hands or tools. The ground was coated with a glutinous brown slime: plant and animal life had once thrived here, but all had been reduced to this. The stench of decay hung heavy in the air—and, underpinning it, a subtler burnt odour.

  Lorenzo had seen devastation like this before, more than once. He had been just three years old when his mother had shown him the devolved remains of a Catachan fortress, much like the one in which they lived and none too distant from it. It had probably taken just one slip, she’d said, one small misstep, to bring about the end. The hapless culprit had probably never even known what he’d done, hadn’t lived long enough to realise he had disturbed a barking toad.

  The galaxy’s most poisonous creature, and one with a unique defence mechanism. Uniquely explosive, that was.

  Lorenzo hauled himself out of the water, knowing that for the next few kilometres he would have to proceed with extra caution, needed to know exactly where he was stepping. The toad that had blown itself up here had been a small one, its blast diameter less than two hundred metres—but still, Lorenzo knew that nothing would ever grow in this area again.

  And, where there had been one barking toad, there were bound to be others.

  Sure enough, he had barely crossed the dead zone and re-entered the trees when he heard a distinctive cough-like cry from ahead, to his right, from the river—then an answering call from the left, too close by for comfort. Lorenzo’s stomach tightened at the thought of the peril before him—and of how it would slow him down, and make him far easier prey for the one still closing in from behind.

  But perhaps, he thought, there was some hope after all—some way in which he could set one imminent threat against the other, and come out on top of both.

  It wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for. The barking toad was deceptively small and fragile-seeming—and, unlike most of the creatures of Catachan, it didn’t appear remotely resentful of a human presence. Lorenzo supposed its kind was well used to being left alone. He followed it for a little over ten minutes—from a distance, of course—during which it hopped about without apparent aim, as if it were playing with him. Then it sprang into a patch of weeds, and was lost.

  Lorenzo searched again, and this time he had more luck. A second toad led him back to the river, where he was just in time to see it slipping into a nook in the bank. He could tell from the guttural sounds that greeted it that there were three or four more toads in there: a family unit, he supposed. Perfect for his needs.

  He gathered creepers from the surrounding trees, started to twist and to knot them together. It was fiddly work, and time-consuming, and Lorenzo’s tired eyes began to blur. He found a sizeable enough boulder, threaded his makeshift rope about it, and hauled it onto his good shoulder, and from there into the V-shaped crook of a stout tree. By now, he feared very much that he had been still too long, that the Devil could appear at any moment—and as before, that fear only slowed him further.

  At last, though, his work was done, and he stepped back to inspect the results. He had rigged his tripwire high so as not to be triggered by anything too small—but in the darkness, even he would have been hard-pushed to see it without forewarning. Anyway, as a rule, Catachan Devils didn’t tread carefully. They had no need.

  At least, Lorenzo was banking on this particular Devil believing that, on it walking confidently into his wire, yanking the boulder from its tree. The rock would smack right into the toads’ burrow like a wrecking ball—and its four or five occupants would react in the only way they knew how. Even if some of them could contain themselves, he only needed one to panic, to spark a chain reaction…

  Would it be enough? Lorenzo didn’t know. He had to believe it might be. The armour hadn’t yet been forged that a cloud of barking toad poison couldn’t liquefy in a heartbeat—and this cloud would be four or five times normal strength. But then, no man-made armour was as strong as the natural plating of an elderly Devil—and the flesh beneath those plates was almost as tough.

  He moved on, parting company with the river now as it bent toward the north, and he waited and listened and prayed to the God-Emperor that his plan would succeed, because he didn’t know what else he could try if it didn’t.

  The explosion came sooner than he had anticipated. It rocked the ground beneath him, almost threw him off his feet. Lorenzo fought down a lump in his throat as he turned to find a thick green cloud blossoming behind him, vegetation wilting in its embrace, and he knew if he had been a fraction slower, taken a minute longer over the setting of his trap, he would have been caught in that cloud himself.

  But he hadn’t been slower, he told himself. He’d survived. Again. And this time he had done more than that. He had—could this even be possible?—he had triumphed over his foe. Done what few men had achieved. He, Lorenzo, just seventeen years old, single-handedly, had faced down and killed—killed—a Catachan Devil.

&nbs
p; …maybe…

  He didn’t know what to do, then. He stood and watched as the green cloud settled, and a part of him longed to go back, once it was safe to do so, to find the Devil’s remains and to verify his kill. Images of a triumphant return, a hero’s welcome, played in his mind again—but what if there were no remains? What if the Devil had been reduced, as everything in its vicinity must have been, to sludge? Every second Lorenzo spent in the jungle, alone, wearying, increased the risk to his life—was it wise to prolong his time out here for what was, at best, a small chance of glory?

  And what if the Devil was still alive? What if it was waiting for him?

  It was with reluctance, then, that he tore himself away from that spot. It was with a sense of shame, too, because he felt he had made the wrong choice, the cowardly choice, and he was sure that “Barracuda” Creek would delight in telling him so.

  The sky was beginning to lighten, the first insects of the morning striking up a low, growling hum while other, bigger creatures stirred in the undergrowth. Through his growing fatigue, Lorenzo heard the screeches of carrion birds as they woke to discover his recent handiwork, now a few kilometres behind him. Not that the barking toads would have left them too much to feed on.

  He climbed another tree to take a final bearing from the fading stars—and found to his relief that he could see his destination. The Ashmadia Tower was by some way the tallest structure on Catachan—conceitedly so—and the Imperial Eagle still gleamed at its black tip, despite the best efforts of the elements to erode it.

  He had disturbed a retiring bat, which flew at him and tore at his face and hair. With his fang, Lorenzo impaled it against the tree trunk—but a dizzy wave crashed over him, and he almost fell from his perch. He longed to close his eyes, to sleep—but he knew that if he did, alone out here, he wouldn’t wake up again. He buoyed himself with the knowledge that his trial was almost over. If only his temples weren’t pounding so, and his muscles so weak from dehydration…

  He dropped from the tree, but his bad leg gave way and he landed heavily on his backside. He forced himself to stand, to march on, making himself focus on nothing more than that endeavour. Scan the ground ahead, left foot forward, drag the right foot after it, repeat… and he thought about the Catachan Devil, and convinced himself that he must have killed it, that Creek would be able to verify that fact, that he’d get his hero’s welcome after all—and Lorenzo wasn’t about to miss that, couldn’t bear to have come so close, achieved so much, to fall at this final hurdle.

  He saw the patch of spikers just in time. They were laid out in a thin band, as tall as he was, spreading into the trees to each side of him, and he couldn’t guess how long it would take him to go round them.

  He fell back on an old Catachan trick instead: he flushed a small lizard out from a nearby hole, and swiped at it with his fang as it spat venom at him. He left it alive but wounded, blocking its attempts to flee past him until it had just one way to go.

  The spikers shot their payloads, and Lorenzo leapt for cover. The air was suddenly thick with black, needle-thin, thorns, and his protective tree trembled with the thuds of their multiple impacts. As soon as those impacts had ceased, he made a run for it.

  He ploughed through the denuded plants, moving as fast as his leg would allow him. Already, the spikers’ leaves were bristling anew, and he flung himself to the ground as he drew clear of them, only just ahead of their second discharge.

  Hundreds of fresh thorns sprayed over him, but they’d been aimed too high from too far away, and they covered his back without piercing his skin. He picked himself up, breathlessly, and shook the thorns off him. And his eyes alighted upon the luckless lizard, now wandering confused and already sprouting the first prickly leaf of its own. Soon, there would be one more spiker in this patch: an unusually small one.

  He gathered up some thorns, and carefully broke a few open, dripping their poison onto the tip of his blade. A dozen more, he bundled together and held at arm’s length, gingerly, ensuring that none could scratch him. The Devil may have been dead—oh, please, let it be dead—but there were other creatures out there.

  He was being followed again.

  He hadn’t been sure at first. Tiredness was making his head swim, and Lorenzo’s senses had started to deceive him, made him see threats in the random shapes of the foliage, made him fear he might be too distracted to see the real threats when they came. He jumped at every shifting shadow cast by the rising sun, every slight sound borne on the morning breeze—and he had blamed his own sleep-deprived paranoia for piecing those subtle signs together, unreliable though they were, to paint a nightmare picture for his mind’s eye.

  That was what he had thought at first. Not now.

  He hadn’t yet clapped eyes on his pursuer. It was animal, though, not vegetable, as he knew that none of Catachan’s plants could have kept pace with him for so long. It was big, too: Lorenzo could tell this from the force with which twigs snapped beneath its feet, from the pattern of displacement of the bushes in its path, though he had barely glimpsed this latter. Too big to be one of Creek’s men, presenting him with one final challenge. Almost big enough to be…

  Don’t think that!

  …a razor-tusk? But no, a razor-tusk wouldn’t have had the intelligence to stalk a man, to remain unseen, and this thing could certainly do that. Even when Lorenzo slipped behind a bush and held his breath and the creature couldn’t have heard or seen him, it fell still and silent too, and almost made him think it wasn’t there after all…

  …until he resumed his trek, at which point all those subtle signs returned.

  Why was it hiding from him? If this creature was so big, so smart, then it must have known it was more than a match for Lorenzo in his current condition. Unless…

  The only thing that makes sense. It has to be… No, it can’t be!

  Unless the creature was tired and hurt too, too weak to risk a full-frontal assault and yet so stubborn, bloody-minded, that it couldn’t bring itself to abandon the hunt. Unless it had been compelled to change its tactics, to watch and wait for the moment of maximum advantage, for its prey to make a mistake. Unless…

  He didn’t have far to go now. Ashmadia Tower was little more than an hour away. If Lorenzo could grit his teeth and ignore the throbbing pain in his leg, if he could concentrate for just that short time, sort the real threats from the imaginary ones, if he could keep up a good enough front that his pursuer might think it not worth engaging him and a brisk enough pace that it couldn’t reach him anyway… if Lorenzo could do all that, and if in addition he didn’t run into any more surprises… maybe then, just maybe, even though he had failed this test, he could at least survive it.

  He cursed himself for his pride, for having allowed it to lead him to here. Why had he had to confront Creek? Why hadn’t he been content with domestic duties, until he was ready for more? So most of his friends had been shipped out already; so he’d feared what people would say about him if he was kept behind… They would say those things anyway, now. Creek had been right about him all along, he thought. No fire. He must have pitted him against that Devil in order to prove that very point. He would probably be glad to be rid of an under-achieving trooper.

  Something shifted beneath Lorenzo’s foot—and he could almost have wept as he realised what he’d done: allowed his mind to wander again, let his gaze lose focus. Blundered into a mantrap, a full six paces across. It had felt his weight, and its edges were already curling, about to snap shut. He tried to leap from it, but too late, and he was far, far too slow.

  The plant swallowed his trailing right leg, pain slicing through him as its teeth dug into his wounded thigh. It was all Lorenzo could do to keep from being yanked off his remaining foot. Almost reflexively, he wielded his fang and began to cut through the mantrap’s tough outer shell: he knew from experience that he could free himself before it could digest much more than his trouser leg and the top layer of his skin—under normal circumstances, that was.
r />   His stalker was no longer trying to hide.

  The Catachan Devil was suddenly, shockingly, there, as if its shape had formed out of the trees themselves, and it was barrelling towards him with a cry that was half-roar, half-screech, and this time he couldn’t dodge it, couldn’t run from it. It pounced on Lorenzo, knocking him backwards so his left foot floundered in the air and only the mantrap’s hold on his right leg kept him from falling. He was watching for its tail, knowing that off-balance as he was he wouldn’t be able to avoid it this time—and a claw slipped by his defences and clamped itself to his right arm, numbing his fingers so he could no longer feel his fang though he clung to it doggedly.

  The other claw came for him, and he twisted his left arm out of its path but could do no more than that. The claw bit into his ribs, puncturing the skin, and Lorenzo knew he had only a second to live, that the Devil was about to rend him apart.

  With his left, free hand, he was still clutching spiker thorns. It was all he could do to thrust them in his attacker’s direction, the whole bundle, but somehow he got lucky. He had expected their points to snap against armour; instead, they pierced something soft. And the Catachan Devil howled. It actually howled.

  Its claws flopped open, and it reared away from him, Lorenzo managing to give the thorns one last, savage twist before they were ripped from his hand.

  It was only now that he got a good look at his foe, really took in what he was seeing—as it writhed in pain, its head down, its many legs twitching and thrashing.

  It was injured—badly so. There was certainly no doubt that, when Lorenzo’s barking toad bomb had gone off, the Devil had been at ground zero. Toad poison had eaten into its carapace, apparently causing whole patches of it to melt, to be sloughed off like an old skin. It was through one such hole that Lorenzo had been able to strike, and his spiker thorns still protruded from it, heads buried in the leathern, dark flesh beneath. They had drawn blood: thick, black, vinegar-stinking Catachan Devil blood. He didn’t think he had seen that before.