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‘shroudbeast’ here.

    Between the goss thorns, cornul bushes and areas overgrown with purple-stemmed briars, dark-green mosses blanketed the ground, and from this seed-stems with bulbous red heads sprouted like grass. The covering was soft but firm underfoot and made walking a pleasant experience even though he was heading uphill. Soon Ansel came upon tracks where the seed-stems were crushed down and he knew he was getting closer to the village. Farther in, these tracks were worn down to bare sandy ground that eventually brought him to a wider track, which in turn led to a gate in a goss-thorn fence. The thorns had not been removed from the posts and rails, and acted as a barrier to the wildlife. Beyond the fence the track wound between strip fields, some ploughed and some containing crops of tall plants with trumpet flowers.
    Passing between these fields, Ansel came quickly to the brow of a hill and looked down on Troos.

    He crouched next to a field ditch and, through his image-intensifier, surveyed the village.
    Like many villages on many worlds where there was a surrounding wilderness, this was built at the edge of the river - the low wooden houses huddled together as if for comfort. To one side, large barns clustered, and beyond these projected a jetty to which several skiffs were moored.
    There seemed to be some activity around the barns, a couple of women at a well, but little else going on. Ansel clipped the intensifier at his belt then drew his thin-gun. He studied the display on the side of the weapon, grunted his satisfaction, holstered it, then stood and headed on down.

    First, he must be polite, he decided. He would ask very considerately after the whereabouts of Kelly. He would find Kelly’s daughter and two sons and ask them if they had seen their father. If it transpired that he was getting no cooperation, he would have to use stronger tactics. This he expected, as the colonists were a cantankerous and ungrateful bunch. When THC
    staff had returned here after the hundred years of the Corporate Wars they had discovered the descendants of the original miners lapsed into primitivism. For these people they brought in technology, education, contractual employment with its prospect of wealth and the chance to travel offworld. Their repayment had been a refusal of all contracts, obstinate mulishness, damage claims for the abandonment of their ancestors, and steading claims on land the Company had bought mineral rights to a hundred and eighty years ago. Ansel suspected he might have to get a little rough.

    Ansel strolled into the village and down what he supposed must be the main street, to where the two women were standing at the well. As he approached, they took one look at him, hoisted up their skirts and headed towards the barns.

    ‘Wait,’ Ansel called, but they ignored him.

    He calmly walked after them, round a two-storey building with a wide arched doorway through which he could see a scattering of tables and a bar with bottles racked behind. On the other side of this place, he came face to face with the two women, now accompanied by two men. None of these people looked happy to see him.

    ‘What do you want, Company man?’ asked the elder of the two men.

    Ansel studied the bearded face and saw there the obstinacy he had expected.

    ‘I want Kelly Segre Janssen,’ he said.

    ‘And why do you want him?’ asked the younger man.

    Ansel studied the two men. They both looked to be in their thirties, and as this place was without antiagathic technology that probably was their age. They were infants to him. He appeared to be the same as them, but was twice their age.

    ‘I would prefer to speak to someone in charge,’ he said.

    ‘I am the elder here,’ said the bearded one.

    Ansel doubted that, but thought he would let it ride for the moment.

    ‘Okay, it’s a simple enough matter. The Company owes Kelly a substantial sum for information he provided for the Almanac. I’m here to make sure he