Skoh, dressed in a leather body-glove reinforced with mail links and segments of plasteel armour plate, entered Drusher’s quarters in the keep and looked around.

Drusher closed the door after him.

‘A drink?’ he offered.

‘Thank you, yes.’

Drusher poured two glasses of amasec from the flask in his luggage. Skoh was wandering the room. He paused at the table, and looked down at Drusher’s spread-out mass of notebooks, data-slates and jottings. Skoh carefully leafed through one of the sketch books, studying each water colour illustration.

Drusher brought him his drink.

‘This is fine work,’ said Skoh, making an admiring gesture towards the sketches. ‘Truly you have a good hand and a great eye. That grazer there. Just so.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re no hunter though, are you, Drusher?’

The question took Drusher aback.

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘That’s fine,’ said Skoh, sipping his drink. ‘I didn’t think so. You’re just one more fool caught up in this mess.’

‘I hear you worked the Imperial Pits.’

Skoh looked at Drusher cautiously. ‘Who’s been talking?’

‘Deputy Macks.’

Skoh nodded. ‘Well, it’s true. Twenty-five years I worked for the arena on Thustathrax as a procurer.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I was paid to travel the wilder worlds of the Imperium trapping and collecting animal specimens to fight in the arena. The odder, the more savage, the better. It brought the crowds in if we had something... unusual.’

‘Something like this beast?’

Skoh didn’t reply.

‘It must have been interesting work. Dangerous work. That’s why the bishop doesn’t like you, isn’t it?’

Skoh managed a small smile. ‘The arenas of the Imperial Pits are ungodly, according to his holiness. I was employed by a secular entertainment industry that revelled in bloodletting and carnage. I am, to him, the lowest of the low. And an outsider to boot.’

‘What did you want, Skoh?’ Drusher asked.

‘The baron tells me my fee will be forfeit if I fail to make a kill soon. I have wages to pay, overheads to consider. This job has dragged on. I can kill this beast, Drusher, but I can’t find it. I think you can. Help me, and I’ll pay you a dividend of my earnings.’

‘I’m not interested in money,’ said Drusher, sipping his amasec.

‘You’re not?’

‘I’m interested in two things. An end to this slaughter and a personal closure. I was hired to produce a complete taxonomy of this planet’s fauna. Now, at the eleventh hour, I seem to have a new apex predator on my hands. If that’s so, it will throw my entire work into disarray. Seven years’ work, you understand?’

‘You think this is an apex predator that you’ve missed?’

‘No,’ said Drusher. ‘Not even slightly. There’d be records, previous incidents. This is either a known predator gone rogue and acting abnormally or…’

‘Or?’

‘It’s an exotic.’