‘Winsomniacs on the move  . . . but now not moving?’ I suggested.

Hooke shook his head.

‘They’re lazy, not stupid.’

‘Could be womads who got caught out.’

This was unlikely, but possible. Winter Nomads had been known to move in clutches of twenty or more to conserve heat, usually covered by a yurt with caribou skirts to stop the outer walkers’ legs from freezing. If things got bad they just downed the yurt with them in it, lit the fire, wrapped themselves in skins and huddled.

‘Possibly. Still, can’t be helped.’

He lowered the snow plough and moved forward. But as he did so, the trace moved away from us. Hooke stopped, and the trace shifted on for a few yards, stopped, paused, then approached us again. A squall of wind hit the Sno-Trac and the vehicle shook. The anemometer on the roof was reading gusts of sixty miles per hour, but the whatever-it-was on the H4S seemed unaffected.

There was silence in the cab for a moment and then, with a slowness that denoted clear deliberation, the radar trace started moving towards us.

‘After a scrap, are you?’ said Hooke, and took the Cowpuncher off the rack behind him. He pushed four D-Cell thermalites into the magazine and racked the first into the battery chamber. The Cowpuncher was not the subtlest of weapons – it was actually intended for herding dairy mammoths rather than fighting – but was the close-quarter weapon of choice when you weren’t big on subtlety and hostility was getting right in your face.

Hooke slid back the window and held the weapon outside while we both stared at the H4S screen, the trace moving ever closer. When it was at the ten-yard range, Hooke let fly.

The pressure wave momentarily turned the snow to rain and should have revealed whatever it was in the blizzard, but there was nothing to be seen except the side of the road and one half of a horse trough. Within a second the blizzard had once more closed in and by the time we looked back at the H4S screen, the radar return had gone.

‘Must have been a glitch,’ said Hooke.

‘No,’ I said, pointing at the bottom of the screen, ‘I think it’s behind us.’

The H4S scanner was mounted on the top of the Sno-Trac and gave a 360-degree view of the surroundings. It was now picking up a trace directly behind, and moving slowly left to right.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Hooke, and drove backwards as fast as he could. I felt a thump and then a judder as we hit something, and he stopped.

‘We got it, whatever it was. Bear, I think.’

‘Why would a bear not hibernate? That never happens.’

‘First time for everything. I’m—’