THE CURIOSITY
Dan Abnett


HE WAS, IT is fair to say, already weary of Gershom when the curiosity came to light. Seven years is a long time in any man's career, seven years living and working in grubby tenements, backwater hostels and frontier habs all over the planet. Long enough to feel like a native, and certainly to look like one, although he had been born forty-two years and many million AU distant. The patched worsted suit with shiny, calloused elbows, the slate grey weathercoat, fingerless leather gloves, wire-framed spectacles, the skin of his face etiolated from too many short, wintry days, his thin hair unnaturally black from a biweekly chemical treatment that he purchased and applied himself.
This insipid and forlorn figure stared at his own refection from the smoked glass screen of the demograph booth.
'Present papers. State name and occupation,' the indistinct form behind the screen said. As he spoke the words appeared in glowing, block-capital holos on the glass.
He put his crumpled documents into the bare metal drawer below the screen and it gobbled them away with an un-oiled clatter. Hunching low, he aimed his mouth helpfully at the vox grille, and said, 'Valentin Drusher, magos biologis.'
'Purpose of travel?' the voice said, subtitled as before.
'I am a magos biologis, as I said. You'll see I have a permit for travel to Outer Udar stamped by the office of the Lord Governor. He is my patron.'
The shape behind the tinted glass panel paused and then the legend ''PLEASE WAIT'' appeared on the screen. Doing as he was told Drusher stood back, rubbing his hands together briskly to chafe warmth into them. It was a miserably early morning in the last few days of autumn and the terminal was vacant. Outside, it was not yet light; the sky was a patchy blue, the colour of a Tarkoni tarkonil's winter plumage, and the orange glare of sodium lamps reflected in the puddles on the rain-slicked concourse. Drusher studied the reflections and they reminded him of the fluorescent banding on the abdomen of the southern latitude glowmoth, Lumenis gershomi.
The air held the bitter foretaste of another hard Gershom winter closing in. He consoled himself with the thought that he would be long gone before winter came. Just a few more days to tidy up this annoying loose end and then he would be done at last.
The drawer slot clacked open again, his refolded papers laid inside.
'Proceed,' said the voice.
Drusher retrieved his papers, gathered up his bags and equipment cases, and walked down into the boarding yard to find himself a seat on the interprovince coach.
It wasn't hard. The vehicle, a converted military gref-carrier from the Peninsula, was all but empty. An old woman in a purple shawl sat alone, fingering rosary beads as she read from a dog-eared devotional chapbook. A young mother, hard-faced and tired, occupied another bench seat, her two small children gathered up in her skirts. A rough-faced agri-worker in leather overalls nodded, half-asleep, one arm protectively around the baskets of live, clucking poultry he shared his seat with. His hound, lean and grinning, prowled the aisle. Two young men, identical twins, sat side by side, motionlessly intent. Drusher set himself down near the front of the cabin, far away from anyone else. He shooed the dog away when it came sniffing at his bags.
A hooter sounded, waking the agri-worker briefly. The coach's big, caged props began to turn and beat, and the patched rubber skirts of the bulky ground-effect vehicle began to swell out. Drusher felt them drunkenly rise up. One of the little children laughed out in glee at the bobbing motion as the vehicle picked up speed.
Then they were out of the city terminal and roaring up to the state highway, fuming spray into the gloomy dawn.
Outer Udar, the most western and - many said - the most heathen of Gershom's provinces, lay far beyond the Tartred Mountains, forty hours away.
For the first hour or two, he worked on his notes, refining technical descriptions on his data-slate. Such polish was simply cosmetic. He'd been over it a hundred times and the taxonomy would have been published as complete by now. Complete but for the curiosity.
He put his slate aside and took the crumpled voxgram from his pocket, hoping yet again that it was a mistake.
Seven years! Seven damn years of rigorous work. To miss a sub-form of tick-fly, a variant weevil, even a divergent rodentae, well that would just be the way of things. Even, he considered, some class of grazer, if it was localised and sufficiently shy in its habits.
But an apex predator? Surely, surely not. Any systematic taxonomy identified all apex predators in the initial phase of preparation by dint of the fact they were the most obvious of any world's creatures.
No, it was a mistake. The curiosity in Outer Udar was an error. He'd stake his reputation on that.
The rolling motion of the gref-coach began to lull him. He fell asleep, dreaming of the characterising mouthparts of filter snakes, the distinguishing feather-palps of lowland locustae, and the bold, striated beaks of peninsula huskpeckers.

HE WOKE TO the sound of infant laughter. The coach was stationary, and sleet was dashing against the grey windows. Blinking, he sat up, and repositioned his dislodged spectacles on his nose. At his feet, the two children had his sketchbooks laid open and were giggling as they surveyed the hand-painted images of beasts and fowls.
'Please,' he said, 'please be careful with those.'
The children looked up at him.
'Zoo books,' said one.
'Yes,' he replied, taking the sketchbooks away from their grubby hands and closing them.
'Why have you got zoo books?'
'I make zoo books,' he said.
They thought about this. Their simple grasp of professional careers did not reach so far. One nudged the other. 'Are you going to put the beast in your zoo books?' the nudged one asked.
'The beast?' he asked. 'Which beast?'
'The hill beast. It has teeth.'
'Great large teeth.'
'It eats men up.'
'And swine.'
'And swine. With its great large teeth. It has no eyes.'
'Come away!' their mother called, and the two children scurried back to her down the aisle.
Drusher looked around the cabin. It was just as he had last seen it. The agri-worker continued to snooze; the old woman was still reading. The only change was the twins, who now sat facing one another, like a mirror.
The cabin door thumped open and flakes of sleet billowed in around several newcomers. A black-robed demograph servitor, its face a cluster of slack tubes beneath augmetic compound eyes. A short-haired woman in a leather body-glove and fur coat, carrying a brown paper parcel. Another agri-worker, his face chillblained, fighting to keep his long-haired terrier from snapping at the roaming hound. A matronly progenium school teacher in a long grey dress. The short-haired woman helped the matron with her luggage.
'Leofrik! This is Leofrik!' the servitor called as he walked the cabin. 'Present your papers!'
Each voyager offered up his or her documents for the servitor to scan. Gershom was very particular about its indigents, the side effect of being so close to a war zone. The Departmento Demographicae maintained a vigilant watch on the planet's human traffic.
The servitor, waste spittle drooling from its mouth tubes, took a long time studying Drusher's papers.
'Magos Biologis?'
'Yes.'
'Reason for travel?'
'I went through all this at the terminal this morning.'
'Reason for travel?'
Drusher sighed. 'Seven years ago, I was commissioned by the Lord Governor of Gershom to draw up a comprehensive taxonomy of the planet's fauna. It is all but complete. However, a curiosity has appeared in Outer Udar and I am travelling there to examine it.'
Drusher wanted to go on. To talk about the extended deadlines he had been forced to request, the increasingly reluctant project funding that had obliged him to take the overland coach instead of a chartered flier, the preposterous idea that he might have missed an apex predator.
But the demograph servitor wasn't interested. It handed the papers back to Drusher and stalked away.
In the meantime, the short-haired woman had taken the seat opposite him. She smiled at Drusher. Her face was lean and sturdy, with a tiny scar zagging up from the left hand corner of her lip. Her eyes were dazzling amber, like photoluminescent cells.
Drusher looked away.
'Magos biologis?' she said.
'Yes.'
'I couldn't help overhearing.'
'Apparently.'
The servitor had dismounted. With a lurch like sea-swell, the gref-carrier rose and got underway again.
'I was told you were coming,' she said.
'What?'
The woman reached into her fur coat - highland fox, if he wasn't mistaken - and produced a wallet which she flipped open to reveal the golden badge inside.
'Germaine Macks, province arbites.'
'You were expecting me, officer?'
'A squirt from the Governor's office. An expert on his way. I'm thrilled, of course. It's about time. So, what's the plan?'
'Plan?'
'Your m.o.?'
Drusher shrugged. 'I suppose I'll examine habitat, look for spores, collate cases and get a decent pict or two if I can.' His voice trailed off. In seven years, no official had ever taken such interest in his work.
'And how do you plan to kill it?' she asked.
'Kill it?' he echoed.
'Yes,' she said, chuckling, as if party to some joke. 'That being the point.'
'I don't intend to kill it. I don't take samples. Just descriptive records, for the taxonomy.' He patted his sketchbooks.
'But you have to kill it,' she said, earnestly. 'I mean, if you don't, who the hell will?'

BY THE FIRELIGHT of the great hearth, Baron Karne went on expansively for several minutes.
'The Lord Governor is a personal friend, a childhood friend, and when he makes it known that a scholar such as yourself is coming to my part of the world, I take pains to make that scholar welcome. Ask, and it will be given, magos. Any service, any requirement. I am happy to provide.'
'Th-thank you, baron,' Drusher said uneasily. He looked about the room. Trophy heads, crested with vast antlers and grimacing their fangs, haunted the shadowy walls. A winter storm battered at the leaded windows. Outer Udar was colder than he had dared imagine.
'I wonder if there might have been a mistake..' Drusher ventured.
'How is that?'
'Sir, I am a taxonomist. A scholar. My expertise is in the cataloguing of fauna-forms. The Lord Governor - your childhood friend, as you say - commissioned me to compile a concordance of Gershom's animal life. I've come here because… well, there seems to be a curiosity out here I may have missed. A predator. I'm here to identify it for the taxonomy. Not kill it. I'm no hunter.'
'You're not?'
'Not at all, sir. I sketch and examine and catalogue.'
The baron bowed his head. 'Dear me… really?'
'I'm truly sorry, sir.'
He looked over at the door into the dining room. It was ajar and light slanted through.
'What will I tell them?' the baron said.
Drusher felt desperately out of his depth. 'If you have guests - I mean, to save face - I could play along, I suppose.'

AROUND THE LONG candlelit table were nineteen local lairds and their ladies, the rotund Bishop of Udar and his secretary, and a square-jawed man with sandy-white hair and piercing eyes. His name was Skoh. Drusher wasn't entirely sure who Skoh was. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure of anything anymore. The baron introduced him as ''that expert from the city I've been promising''.
'You are a famous hunter, then?' the bishop asked Drusher.
'Not famous, your holiness. I have some expertise in the line of animals.'
'Good, good. So claims Skoh here, but in three months, what?'
'It is a difficult beast, your honour,' Skoh said softly. 'I'd welcome some expert advice. What weapon do you favour, magos? Hollowpoint or shot? Do you bait? Do you use blinds?'
'I… um… favour multiple means, sir. Whatever suits.'
'Aren't you terribly afraid?' asked one of the ladies.
'One must never underestimate the quarry, lady,' Drusher said, hoping it conveyed an appropriate sense of duty and caution.
'They say it has no eyes. How does it find its prey?' asked the bishop.
'By scent,' Drusher replied emphatically.
'Not so,' snapped Skoh. 'My hunters have been using sealed body sleeves. Not one sniff of pheromone escapes those suits. And still it finds them.'
'It is,' said Drusher, 'a difficult beast. When was it last seen?'
'The thirteenth,' said the baron, 'Up in the ridgeway, having taken a parlour maid from the yard at Laird Connok's manse. My men scoured the woods for it, to no avail. Before that, the swineherd killed at Karla. The waterman at Sont's Crossroads. The two boys out late by Laer's mere.'
'You forget,' said one of the lairds, 'my potman, just before the killings at the Mere.'
The baron nodded. 'My apologies.'
'The beast is a blight on our land,' said the bishop. 'I tell say to you all, a speck of Chaos. We must rally round the holy aquila and renounce the dark. This thing has come to test our faith.'
Assenting murmurs grumbled around the table.
'Are you a religious man, magos?' the bishop asked.
'Most certainly, your holiness.'
'You must come to worship at my temple tomorrow. I would like to bless you before you begin your bloody work.'
'Thank you, your holiness,' Drusher said.
The outer door burst open, scudding all the candle flames, and a servant hurried in to whisper in the baron's ear. Baron Karne nodded, and the servant hurried out again. A moment later, Arbites Officer Macks was standing in the doorway, dripping wet, a riot-gun over one arm. Her badge was now pinned to the lapel of her leather body suit.
She looked around the room, pausing as she met Drusher's eyes.
'Deputy,' said the baron, rising from his seat. 'To what do we owe this interruption?'
'Another death, lord,' she said. 'Out by the stoops.'

THE ACREAGE TO the north of Baron Kearne's drafty keep was a low swathe of marshy ground given over to poultry farming. Through the sleeting rain, thanks to the light of the bobbing lamps, Drusher could make out row upon row of stoop-sheds constructed from maritime ply and wire. There was a strong smell of mud and bird lime.
Drusher followed the baron and Officer Macks down boarded paths fringed by gorse hedges. With them came three of the Baron's huscarls, lanterns swinging from the tines of their billhooks. The weather was dreadful. Ice rain stung Drusher's cheeks numb and, as he pulled his old weathercoat tighter around him, he longed for a hat and a warm fox-fur jacket like the one Macks wore.
There was an odd wobbling noise just audible over the drumming of the rain. Drusher realised it was the agitated clucking of thousands of poultry birds.
They reached the stoops, and trudged up a metal-mesh walkway between the first two shed rows. The bird-dung stink was stronger now, musty and stale despite the rain. Teased clumps of white feathers clogged the cage wire. Macks said something to the baron and pointed. A flashlight beam moved around up ahead. It was one of Macks's junior arbites, a young man by the name of Lussin, according to his quilted jacket's nametag. He looked agitated, and extremely glad to see company at last.
The frame door to one of the stoop sheds was open; Macks shone her light inside. Drusher caught a glimpse of feathers and some kind of metal cylinder lying on the floor.
He followed Macks and the baron into the stoop.
Drusher had never seen a dead body before, except for that of his Uncle Rudiger, who had died when Drusher was a boy. The family had visited his body in the chapel of rest to pay their respects and Uncle Rudiger had looked normal. Asleep. Drusher, with a child's naivete, had quite expected his uncle to jump up and laugh in their faces. Uncle Rudiger had been a great one for practical jokes.
The body in the poultry stoop wasn't about to jump up or do anything. It was face down, thankfully, its limbs draped in a contorted, awkward way that wasn't a practical joke. This was one of the baron's farm staff, apparently, a yeoman called Kalken. He'd been doing the night feed, and the metal cylinder Drusher had seen was Kalken's grain-hopper, lying where he'd dropped it in a pile of spilt maize.
Macks knelt down by the body. She looked up at Drusher and made a little jerk with her head that indicated he might want to go outside again. Drusher stuck his hands in his coat pockets resolutely and stayed put. With a shrug, Macks turned the body over.

'ARE YOU ALL right?' Macks said.
'What?'
'Are you all right?'
Drusher opened his eyes. He couldn't remember leaving the stoop, but he was outside in the rain again, leaning against the barn opposite, his hands clenched in the wire mesh so tight he'd drawn blood.
'Magos?'
'Y-yes,' he stammered. 'I'm fine.' He thought it likely that he'd never forget what he'd just seen. The awful flop of the rolling body. The way a good deal of it had remained behind on the muddy floor.
'Take a few deep breaths,' she said.
'I really am fine.'
'You look pale.'
'I'm always pale.'
She shrugged. 'You might as well stay here,' she added, though Drusher felt she'd said it less out of concern for his nerves and more because she knew he wasn't particularly useful. 'I'm going to make some notes in situ.'
'There were bites,' he said.
'Yes,' Macks replied. 'At least, I think so.'
'Measure them. And examine the bite radius for foreign matter. Tooth fragments that might have lodged in the bone. That sort of thing.'
'Right,' she said and turned away.
'Where did it get in?' he called after her.
'What?'
'Where did it get in? Was the cage door open?'
'No. He'd fastened it behind him when we found him.'
'Can I borrow a flashlight?'
Macks got a lamp-pack from Lussin and gave it to Drusher. Then she went back into the stoop with the baron to begin her grisly inspection properly.
Drusher began to walk away down the length of the stoop run, shining his torch in through the cages on either side.
'Don't roam too far, sir!' one of the huscarls called out after him.
Drusher didn't answer. He wanted to roam as far as he could. The thought of being anywhere near that bloody, dismembered mess made him shiver. He was sweating despite the winter gale.
Ten metres down, near the end of the row, he found the wire cage roof of one of the stoops had been torn wide open. Drusher played the torch around. He was near the end fence of the poultry compound, a three metre timber pale topped with a barbed and electrified string of wires. He could see no hole in the fence or damage to the deterrent wires. Had the beast cleared the wall itself? Quite a leap. There was no sign of spore in the thick mud at his feet. The rain was washing it into soup.
He let himself into the ruptured stoop and examined the torn wire roof. With the rain splashing off his face, he reached up and yanked part of it down, studying the broken ends with his lamp closely.
It wasn't torn. It was cut, cleanly, the tough wire strands simply severed. What could do that? Certainly not teeth, not even teeth that could take the front off a man's face and body. A power blade, perhaps, but that would leave signs of oxidisation and heat-fatigue.
As far as he knew - and there was no man on Gershom better qualified - there wasn't an animal on the planet that could leap a three metre security fence and slice open reinforced agricultural mesh.
Drusher took out the compact digital picter he always carried and took a few snaps of the wire for reference. It came through this cage roof, he thought. Probably landed on it, in point of fact, coming over the fence, cut its way in… and then what?
He looked around. The covered timber coop-end of the shed was dark and unforthcoming.
It suddenly occurred to him that whatever it was might still be there.
He felt terror and stupidity in roughly equal measures. He'd been so anxious to get away from that terrible corpse and prove he was good for something, the blindingly obvious had passed him by.
It was still here. It was still right here in the shadows of the coop-box. Once the idea had entered his brain it became unshakable fact. It really was there, just out of sight in the gloom, breathing low, gazing at him without eyes, coiling to pounce.
He backed towards the cage door, fumbling for the latch. He could hear it moving now, the rustle of straw, the crunch of dried lime on the box's wooden floor.
Dear God-Emperor, he was going to—
'Drusher? Golden Throne! I nearly blasted you!' Macks emerged from the coop-box, straw sticking to her wet hair. She lowered her riot-gun.
'What are you doing here?' she asked.
'I was… looking for… traces…,' he said, trying to slow his thrashing pulse. He gestured up at the torn cage roof.
'You'll love this then,' she said, and led him into the stinking darkness of the coop-box. The floor was littered with dead poultry, feathers glued to the wallboards with blood. The smell of offal was overpowering and made him gag.
Macks shone her flashlight at the end wall, and showed him the splintered hole in the timbers.
'It came in and went right down through the row of stoops, smashing through each dividing wall until it found Kalken,' she said. She'd come back along that route to find Drusher. The holes were easily big enough for her to get through.
'Killed everything in its path,' she said. 'Hundreds of roosting birds.'
'But it didn't eat anything,' he observed, struggling to overcome his nausea. 'It slashed or bit its way through, but there's no sign of feeding.'
'That's important why?' she asked.
He shrugged. He took shots of the splintered holes with his picter, and then got her to hold the light steady while he measured the dimensions of each hole with his las-surveyor.
'Have you told anyone?' he asked her.
'Told anyone what?'
'The truth about me? About what I am?'
She shook her head. 'I didn't see any point.'
'The baron knows,' he told her.
'Right.'
There was movement outside, and he followed her out of the stoop. Skoh was coming down the walkway through the rain. He'd changed into a foul-weather suit, and was hefting what looked like an autolaser, though Drusher was no expert on weapons. It had a big, chrome drum-barrel, and was so heavy it was supported by a gyro harness strapped around his torso. An auspex target-lens covered his right eye like a patch.
'You've seen the body?' she asked him.
'Yes. My men are sweeping the wood behind the fence.'
'It came right through here,' she said, indicating the run of stoops.
Skoh nodded and looked at Drusher, as if expecting some expert insight from him. When none came, Skoh left them without a word and continued on down the path.
'Who is he?' Drusher asked.
'Fernal Skoh? He's a freelance hunter. Game specialist. The community hired him and his men when it became clear I wasn't up to the job.' There was rich contempt in her voice.
'The bishop doesn't think much of him,' Drusher said.
Macks grinned. 'The bishop doesn't think much of anyone. Skoh's not had much success so far, despite his flashy rep. Besides, the bishop has his own man on the job.'
'His own man?'
'Gundax. You'll meet him before long. He's the bishop's bodyguard. Tough piece of work.'
'Doesn't the bishop think Skoh can get the job done?'
'I don't think anybody does any more. The baron's threatening to withhold Skoh's fee. Anyway, Skoh's not the bishop's sort.'
'What?'
'Skoh's ungodly, according to his holiness. His background is in bloodsports. The Imperial Pits on Thustathrax.'

DRUSHER'S REPOSE WAS fractured by lurid dreams of bodies that left steaming parts behind when they rolled over. In the small hours, he gave up on rest, and got out of bed.
He'd been given a room on an upper floor of the keep. It was terribly cold, and the wind and rain rattled the poorly-fitted shutters. Drusher got dressed, activated a glow globe, and stoked some life into the portable heater. By the light of the globe, he spread out his equipment and note books on the table and distracted himself with study.
There wasn't a land predator in Gershom that even approximately fitted the evidence. Prairie wolves from the western continent, Lupus cygnadae gershomi, were rapacious enough, but their pack mentality meant they were unlikely to be lone killers. The great mottled felid of the peninsula taiga, sadly almost extinct, had the bulk and power, and could well have cleared the fence, but neither it nor a prairie wolf would could have cut wire that like. And either would have fed.
Besides, Macks had given him her scribbled findings. There was no foreign matter in the poor yeoman's wounds, but she'd made an estimation of the bite radius. Fifty-three centimetres. Fifty-three!
No wolf came close. The biggest radius Drusher had measured for a felid was thirty seven, and that had been from a skull in the Peninsula Museum. All the biggest cats were long dead now.
The only thing that came close was Gnathocorda maximus, the vast, deep ocean fish. But this was Outer Udar. There were no wolves here, no forest cats, and certainly no sharks on the loose.
He looked at the picts he'd made of the holes in the stoop walls. It was hard to define from the splinter damage, but it looked like each gap had been ripped open by a double blow, each point descending diagonally from the upper corners. Like a man slicing an X with two swords.
And what was all this talk about it having no eyes?

LYAM GUNDAX'S EYES were dark and close together. He was a tall, massively muscled man with a forked beard and braided black hair. Drusher could smell his body-sweat, a scent like that of an animal.
'Who are you and what do you want?'
It was early in the day. The rains had slowed to a drizzle, and the land was dark under a grey sky. Outer Udar was a wide skirt of rocky uplands and black forests around the dismal horizon.
Drusher had come to the cathedral only to find his way into the nave blocked by the big, fur-clad Gundax. The bishop's man was decorated with bead necklaces and wrist-straps, heavy with polished stones, charms, Imperial symbols and animal teeth.
'Gundax! Come away!' the bishop called out, as if calling off a dog. He wobbled into view as Gundax stepped back.
'Drusher, my dear child,' the bishop greeted him. 'Pay no attention to my rogue here. This is the magos Biologis I told you about,' he told Gundax.
Gundax nodded curtly, his leather smock creaking. His charm beads clattered against each other.
'Walk with me,' the bishop told Drusher.
They plodded side by side down the nave. Drusher made a few admiring remarks about the temple's towering architecture and glorious stained glass work.
'This is a hard parish,' said the bishop. 'Hard and hardy on the edge of beyond. Of course, I'm not complaining. I serve the God-Emperor in whatever capacity he calls on me to perform. And here is as good as any.'
'The Emperor protects,' Drusher said.
'He doesn't seem to be doing that so much here these days,' said the bishop. 'It weakens the faith. I have a tough enough time instilling virtue and belief into the weather-beaten folk of this blasted land, and this beast… it saps every ounce of fibre.'
'It must be difficult, your holiness.'
'Life is difficult. We rise to our tests. But, my dear magos, I fear for the spiritual life of this community almost as much as I fear for its flesh and blood. This thing… this beast… it is not an animal. It is a test of faith. An emissary of chaos. For it to roam here, unchecked also shows that disbelief may roam here likewise. In every sermon I preach, I declaim as much. The beast is a sign that we have fallen away and allowed taint into our souls. To kill it, to cast it out, we must first reaffirm our faith in the Golden Throne.'
'You make it sound simple, your holiness.'
'It is not, of course! But this beast may be a blessing in disguise. Ultimately, I mean. If it makes us renew our belief and our trust in the absolute sanctity of the aquila, then I will offer thanks for it in time. Only in true adversity may a congregation find its focus.'
'I commend your zeal, bishop.'
'So… do you have any leads? Any expert insight?'
'Not yet, your holiness.'
'Ah well, early days, Come, let me bless you and your work.'
'Your holiness? One thing?'
'Yes, Magos?' said the bishop brightly, halting in his tracks.
'You said the beast has no eyes. In fact, that seems to be the popular conviction.' Drusher paused, remembering the words of the child on the coach.
'No eyes, indeed! No eyes, that's what they say.'
'Who, your holiness?'
The bishop paused. 'Why, the folk of Outer Udar. It is what they know of it.'
'I was of the understanding that no one had actually seen this thing. Seen it and survived, I mean.'
The bishop shrugged. 'Really?'
'I know of no eye-witness. No one can offer any sort of description. No one knows the form or size of this thing. Of course, we can make guesses. We know it has teeth from the wounds it delivers, and from that I can estimate the size of the mouth. We know it is small enough to pass through a man-sized hole. And, I fancy, it has shearing claws or talons of some considerable size. But other than that, there is no certainty of its form or nature. And yet… everyone seems certain it has no eyes. Why is that, do you think?'
'Tattle,' smiled the bishop. 'Tavern talk, fireside yap. You know how people invent things, especially if they know nothing and they're afraid. I'm sure it has eyes.'
'I see,' said Drusher.
'Now, come and receive my blessing.'
Drusher endured the short blessing ritual. He didn't feel any better for it.

'I WOULD APPRECIATE your collaboration, magos,' said Fernal Skoh.
Drusher raised his eyebrows and hesitated, then let the hunter into his chambers. It was late afternoon, and an ice-wind was rising in the north.
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, dataslates 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.'
Skoh nodded. 'You've been here a day and you're that certain?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Do you have supporting evidence?'
'It doesn't match anything I've turned up in seven years. And it doesn't feed. There is no sign of appetite or predation. It simply kills and kills and kills again. That's the behaviour of a rogue animal, a carnivore that's no longer killing due to hunger. And it's the behaviour of a creature alien to this world. May I ask you a couple of questions?'
Skoh set his empty glass down on the table. 'By all means.'
'Why do they say it has no eyes? Where did that rumour come from?'
'All I know about that is that the lack of eyes is a regular feature of the bishop's hellfire sermons. I presumed it was hyperbolic invention on his part, which has fallen into common rumour.'
'My other question is this: you know what it is, don't you?'
Skoh looked at him. His eyes pierced right through Drusher.
'No,' he said.

BY DAWN THE next day, there had been another death. A swine herder out beyond the crossroads had been killed in the night, and twenty of his saddlebacks along with him. Drusher went out into the sparse woodland with Skoh, Macks, Lussin and two of Skoh's huntsmen.
The air was cold and ice-fog wrapped the hillside. It was ten below. At the swine farm, the bodies of hogs and hogherd alike had frozen into the mud of the pens, their copious blood making ruby-like crystals.
In the steep thorn scrub above the swine farm, Drusher stopped the group and handed out the cartridges he'd prepared the night before.
'Load them into your shotguns,' he said. 'They won't have much range, I'm afraid.'
Macks and Lussin had arbites-issue riot-guns. Skoh had made sure his men had brought short action pump-shots along with their heavy ordnance. Both huntsmen, like Skoh, were weighed down with torso rigs supporting massive autolasers.
'What are these?' Lussin asked.
Drusher broke a cartridge open to show them. Little chrome pellets were packed inside in a sticky fluid suspension.
'Trackers,' he said. 'Miniature tracker units. They have a two thousand kilometre range. I usually use them for ringing birds. In fact I plotted the migration patterns of the lesser beakspot and the frigate gull Tachybaptus maritimus over a three year period using just these very—'
'I'm sure you did a great job,' snapped Macks. 'But can we get on?'
Drusher nodded. 'I've packed them in contact adhesive. If you see anything - anything - then you mark it.'
They made their way up the thorny scarp and entered a stretch of black-birch woodland. Thanks to the fog, the world had become a shrunken, myopic place. Unaided visibility was twenty metres. Stark and twisted black trees hemmed them in, gradually receding into the white vapour. The earth was hard, and groundcover leaves were brittle with frost. The obscured sun backlit the fog, turning the sky into a glowing white haze. Skoh spread the group into a wide line, but still close enough for every person to be visible at least to his immediate neighbour. Drusher stayed with Macks. There was an uncanny stillness, broken only by the sounds of their breathing and movement.
Drusher was bone-cold. Macks, wearing a quilted arbites jacket, had leant him her fox-fur jacket, which he wore over his own weathercoat. His breath clouded the air.
'Do you have a weapon?' she asked.
He shook his head.
She slid a short-pattern auto-pistol out of an underarm rig, checked the load, and handed it to him grip first.
He looked at it uncertainly, as if it was some new specimen for collation. It had a brushed-matt finish and a black, rubberised grip—
'The safety's here, beside the trigger guard. If you have to fire it, hold it with both hands and aim low because the kick lifts it.'
'I don't think so,' he said. 'I've never been a great one for guns.'
'I'd feel better if you had something.'
'You wouldn't feel better if I shot you by accident, which is likely if you let me loose with something like that.'
She shrugged and put it away again.
'Your funeral,' she said.
'I do hope not.'
They walked on another kilometre or two. Skoh and his hired hands had auspex units taped to the their forearms, scanning for movement.
'What was the time of death, do you reckon?' Drusher asked.
Macks pursed her lips. 'Four, four-thirty? The bodies had a residual core temperature.'
'So three or four hours ago?'
The chance of anything still being around seemed very slim to Drusher. Given the Beast's hit-and-run habits, it would be long gone by now. But the cold offered possibilities. It had set the soil hard and solid. Tracks might remain. Drusher kept his eyes on the ground.
They went across open fields, thick with rime, and along the basin of a wooded dell where the fallen leaves had frozen into a slippery mat. The fog was actually beginning to disperse, but down in the hollow it was as thick as smoke. Butcher birds, jet black and armed with shiny hook-beaks, cawed, clacked and circled in the treetops.
Drusher suddenly heard an extraordinary noise. It sounded like an industrial riveter or a steam-powered loom. A puffing, pneumatic sputter interlaced with high pitch squeals.
Macks started to run. Her vox-link crackled into life.
'What is it?' Drusher called, hurrying after her.
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's jogging back as it 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 now. A second weapon joining the first. Stacatto puff-zwip-pufj-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 riot-gun 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 turbo-lasers, and they didn't kill it.' He nodded to Skoh's body. 'That's my paycheck gone. All my dividends.'
'Is that all you care about?' Lussin asked.
'No,' said the hunter, 'I care about living too.' He took out a lho-stick, lit it and sucked hard. 'I told Skoh we'd wasted our time here. Stayed too long. He wouldn't admit it. He said he couldn't afford to cut our losses and leave. Screw it. Screw him.'
The hunter straightened up and dragged on his smoke-stick again. 'Good luck,' he said and began to walk away.
'Where the hell are you going?' Macks demanded.
'Where we should have gone weeks ago. As far away as possible.'
'Come back!' cried Lussin. The hunter shook his head and wandered away into the fog. Drusher never saw him again.

'WHAT DO WE do?' Lussin asked Macks. She was prowling up and down, fists clenched. She growled something.
'One of them got a round off, with a shotgun,' Drusher said. His voice was hoarse from vomiting and his mouth tasted foul.
'You sure?' Macks snapped.
'I heard a shotgun,' Drusher said.
'I didn't,' said Macks.
'I think I did… maybe…' Lussin murmured softly, rubbing his eyes.
'Get an auspex!' Macks ordered. Drusher wasn't sure who she was speaking to, but Lussin didn't move. Reluctantly, Drusher approached Skoh's body, trying not to look directly at it. He crouched down and started to peel away the tape that secured the compact scanner to Skoh's left gauntlet.
Skoh opened his eyes and exhaled steam. Drusher screamed, and would have leapt back if the hunter's left hand hadn't grabbed his wrist.
'Drusher…'
'Oh no… oh no…'
The hand pulled him closer. He could smell the hot, metallic stink of blood.
'Saw it…'
'What?'
'I… saw… it…' Thin, watery blood leaked from Skoh's mouth and his breathing was ragged. His eyes were dull and filmy.
'What did you see?' asked Drusher.
'You… were… right, Drusher… I… I did… know what… it was… suspected… didn't want… didn't want to say… cause a panic… and anyway… couldn't be true… not here… couldn't be here…'
'What did you see?' Drusher repeated.
'All the things… I've tracked… tracked and caught in… in my life… for the Pits… you know I worked for the Pits…?'
'Yes.'
'Never seen one… before… but been told… about them… you don't mess with… don't mess with them… don't care what the… the Pits would pay for one.'
'What was it, Skoh?'
'The Great… Great Devourer…'
'Skoh?'
The hunter tried to turn his head to look at Drusher. A torrent of black blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils, and his eyes went blank.
Drusher tore the auspex from the dead man's forearm and got to his feet.
'What did he say?' Macks asked.
'He was raving,' said Drusher. 'The pain had taken his senses away.'
He swept the auspex around and tried to adjust its depth of field. He was getting a lot of nearby bounce from the trackers that had gone wide and pelted the ferns and tree boles.
Two contacts showed at a greater range. Two of the glue-dipped teleplugs anchored to the hide of something moving northwest, just a kilometre and a half away.
'Got anything?'
'Yes. Come on.'
Macks was clearly considering taking one of the heavy turbo-las weapons from the corpses, but that would mean touching them.
'Right,' she said. 'Lead on.'
'Macks?'
'Yes?'
'Maybe I should borrow that handgun after all,' Drusher said.

THEY HURRIED THROUGH the frozen woodland, following the steady returns of the auspex. The fog was burning off now, and the heavy red sun was glowering down, casting a rosy tint across the iced wilderness.
When they paused for a moment to catch their breaths, Macks looked at the magos.
'What?' she asked.
'I was just thinking…'
'Thinking what?'
'Skoh was looking for this thing for months. State of the art track-ware, qualified help. Not a sign. And then, today…'
'He got unlucky. Damn, we all got unlucky.'
'No,' said Drusher. 'If you were the beast… wouldn't today be a good day to turn and take him out? It was his last serious try. He's coming out with a magos biologis at his side, changing tactics. Using taggers.'
'What are you saying, Drusher?'
Drusher shrugged. 'I don't know. It's… convenient, I suppose. This thing is quick and sly enough to do its evil work and stay right out of harm's way. By the time a killing is discovered, it's long gone. Today, we had the best chance yet of catching it. And what does it do? It changes its habits entirely and turns on us.'
'So?' asked Lussin.
'Almost like it knew. Almost like it was concerned that a magos biologis and an experienced tracker might have enough skill between them to pose a realistic threat.'
'It's just an animal. What did you call it? An apex predator.'
'Maybe. But it's what a man would do. A fugitive who's evaded capture this long, but hears that the search for him has stepped up. He might decide the time was right to turn and fight.'
'You talk like you know what this thing is, Drusher,' said Macks.
'I don't. It doesn't fit into any taxonomy I've studied. It doesnlt fit into any Imperial taxonomy either. Except maybe classified ones.'
'What?'
'Come on.' Drusher stood up and hurried on through the copse.

THE AIR-MILL HAD been derelict for fifty years. Its weather boards had fallen away and the sails of its wind were flaking. The district had processed its flour here, before the cheaper mass-production plant had opened in Udar Town half a century ago.
Drusher, Macks and Lussin edged down through the chokes of weed brush towards the rear of the ruin. The tracker tags had been stationary for half an hour.
Macks pushed the lap-frame door open with the snout of her riot-gun. They slid inside. The interior space was a dingy cone of timber and beamed floors. The mill-gear ran down through the tower's spine like the gears of a gigantic clock.
It smelled of mildew and rotting flour-dust. Drusher took out the pistol. He pointed upwards. Lussin, riot-gun gripped tightly, edged up the open-framed steps to the second level.
Drusher heard something. A slither. A scurry.
He hung back against the wall. There was something up with the auspex. An interference pattern that was making the screen jump. As if an outside signal was chopping the scanner's returns.
Macks circled wide, gun raised to aim at the roof. Lussin reached the head of the stairs and switched around, sweeping with his gun. Drusher tried to get the auspex to clear.
Lussin screamed, and his gun went off. There was a heavy, splintering sound as he fell backwards down the steps, his weapon discharging a second time.
He was dead. The front of his skull was peeled off and blood squirted into the air.
Macks howled, and fired her riot gun into the ceiling, pumping the grip and blasting the rotten floorboards in a blizzard of wood splinters with each successive shot. Every muzzle-flash lit the mill room for a millisecond.
Exploding wood away before it, the Beast smashed through the deck and came down at them.
It was a blur. Just a blur, moving faster than anything had a right to. Macks's riot gun boomed again. The creature moved like smoke in a draft. Drusher had a fleeting glimpse of deep purple body plates, a snapping tail of gristly bone, forearm claws like harvest scythes. Macks screamed.
Drusher dropped the auspex and fired his pistol.
The recoil almost broke his wrist. He yelped in pain and frustration, stung hard by the kick. Use both hands, she'd told him.
It turned from Macks, chittering, and bounded across the floor right at him.
It was beautiful. Perfect. An organic engine designed for one sole task: murder. The muscular power of the body, the counter-weight tail; the scythe limbs, like a pair of swords. The inhuman hate.
It had no eyes, at least none that he could see.
Hold the gun with both hands and aim low. That's what she'd said. Because of the kick.
Drusher fired. The recoil slammed up his arms. If he'd hit anything, it wasn't obvious. He fired again.
The Beast opened its mouth. Fifty three centimetres of bite radius, teeth like thorns. The blade-limbs jerking back to kill him.
He fired again. And again. He saw at least one round flick away, deflected by the Beasts' bio-armour.
It was right on him.
And then it was thrown sideways against the wall.
It dropped, writhed, and rose again.
Drusher shot it in the head.
It lunged at him. A riot gun roared and blew it back. Bleeding from the forehead, Macks stepped up and fired blast after blast. She fired until the gun was empty, then took the pistol out of Drusher's hands and emptied that into it too.
Ichor covered the walls. Frothy goo dribbled out of the Beast's fractured bone armour.
'What is it?' Macks asked.
'I believe,' Drusher replied, 'it's called an hormagaunt.'
But Macks had passed out.

IT TOOK THE better part of an hour for the relief team of arbites to reach them from Udar Town. Drusher had made Macks comfortable by them, and dressed her wounds.
Pistol in hand, he'd carefully examined the beast. The goad-control was easy to find, implanted into the back of the eyeless head.
When Macks came round again, he showed her.
'You need to deal with this.'
'What does it mean?'
'It means this abomination was brought here deliberately. It means that someone was controlling it, directing it in a rudimentary fashion.'
'Really? Like who?'
'I'd start by asking the bishop some questions, and his pet heavy, Gundax. I could be wrong, of course, because it's not my field, but I think the bishop has a lot to gain from something that puts the fear of the God-Emperor into his flock. It steels the faith of a congregation to have something real to rally against.'
'He did this on purpose?'
'It's just a theory. Someone did.'
Macks was quiet for a while. He could guess what she was thinking. There would be an investigation and an inquest. The Inquisition may have to be involved. Every aspect of life in the province would be scrutinised and pulled apart. It could take months. Drusher knew it meant he wouldn't be leaving Outer Udar any time soon. As a chief witness, he'd be required to stay.
Outside, it had begun to sleet again.
'You must be happy at least,' murmured Macks. 'That work of yours, your great taxonomy. It's all done. You've finished.'
'It was done before I even got here,' said Drusher dryly. He nodded at the body of the beast. He'd covered it with a piece of sacking so he didn't have to look at it any more. 'That wasn't part of my job. Just a curiosity.'
'Oh well,' she replied with a sigh.
He went to the mill door, and gazed out into the sleeting wilds. Ice pricked at his face. Gershom would be keeping him in its chilly grip a while longer yet.
'Could I keep this jacket a little longer?' he asked Macks, indicating the fur coat she'd lent him. 'It's going to be a cold winter.'