Imperial Guard 02 - Better the Devil by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

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.

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