He heard the noise again, and made more sense of it. One of Skoh’s men had opened fire with his autolaser.

He scrambled through the frosty ground-brush, trying to keep up with Macks’ jogging as she slipped in and out of sight between the tree trunks. Twice, he went over on the frozen rug of leaves, scraping his palms.

‘Macks! What’s going on?’

More shooting. A second weapon joining the first. Stacatto puff-zwip-puff-zwip.

Then the dreadful, plangent boom of a shotgun.

Drusher almost ran into Macks. She had stopped in her tracks.

Ahead of them, in a narrow clearing between leafless tindletrees, Skoh lay on his back. It looked like his chest and groin was on fire, but Drusher realised it wasn’t smoke. It was steam, wafting up from wretched wounds that had all but eviscerated him. His heavy weapon and part of its gimbal-rig had been torn off and were lying on the other side of the clearing. Huge clouts of fused earth had been torn out of the ground and two small trees severed completely from the fury of his shooting.

‘Throne of Terra...’ Macks stammered.

Drusher felt oddly dislocated, as if it wasn’t actually happening. They walked together, slowly, towards the body of the hunter. He still had his pump-shot clamped in his hand. The end of the barrel was missing.

Macks suddenly swung left, her riotgun aimed. One of Skoh’s men stood on the other side of the clearing, half-hidden by a tree and only now visible to them. He wasn’t actually standing. His body was lodged upright by the tree itself. His head was bowed onto his chest, the angle of the tilt far, far greater than any spine should allow. Macks approached him tentatively, and reached out a hand. When she touched him, he sagged sideways and his head flopped further. Drusher saw that only the merest shred of skin kept it attached to the rest of the body.

Drusher was overcome with heaving retches, and he wobbled over to the thickets to throw up. Lussin and the other huntsman stumbled into the clearing while he was emptying his stomach.

‘Did you see anything?’ Macks barked at the other men.

‘I just heard the shooting,’ Lussin moaned. He couldn’t take his eyes from Skoh’s awfully exposed entrails.

‘That’s it, then,’ said the hunter. He leaned back against a tree trunk, and clutched his head in his hands. ‘Damn, that’s it then.’

‘It’s got to be close! Come on!’ Macks snapped.

‘And do what?’ the hunter asked. ‘Two of them, with auto-lasers, and they didn’t kill it.’ He nodded to Skoh’s body. ‘That’s my paycheque gone. All my dividends.’

‘Is that all you care about?’ Lussin asked.