At the back of the stand there were awninged areas where food was being prepared. Smells of roasting meat drifted over the stand and out into the forest.
"That'll have them frothing at the mouth," Star Marshal Yomonul said, leaning over to Gurgeh with a whirring of servoes. They were sitting side by side, on the front rank of the platform, a little along from the Emperor. Both held a large projectile rifle, fastened to a supporting tripod in front of them.
"What will?" Gurgeh asked.
"The smell." Yomonul grinned, gesturing behind them to the fires and grills. "Roasted meat. Wind's carrying it their way. It'll drive them crazy."
"Oh, great," muttered Flere-Imsaho from near Gurgeh's feet. It had already tried to persuade Gurgeh not to take part in the hunt.
Gurgeh ignored the machine and nodded. "Of course," he said. He hefted the rifle stock. The ancient weapon was single shot; a sliding bolt had to be operated to reload it. Each gun had slightly different rifling patterns, so that when the bullets were removed from the bodies of the animals, the marks on them would allow a score to be kept and heads and pelts to be allocated.
"You sure you've used one of these before?" Yomonul asked, grinning at him. The apex was in a good mood. In a few tens of days he would be released from the exoskeleton. Meanwhile, the Emperor had allowed the prison regimen to be relaxed; Yomonul could socialise, drink, and eat whatever he liked.
Gurgeh nodded. "I've shot guns," he said. He'd never used a projectile gun, but there had been that day, years ago now, with Yay, in the desert.
"Bet you've never shot anything live before," the drone said.
Yomonul tapped the machine's casing with one carbon-shod foot. "Quiet, thing," he said.
Flere-Imsaho tipped slowly up so that its bevelled brown front pointed up at Gurgeh. ""Thing"?" it said indignantly, in a sort of whispered screech.
Gurgeh winked and put his finger to his lips. He and Yomonul grinned at each other.
The hunt, as it was called, started with a blare of trumpets and the distant howling of the troshae. A line of males appeared from the forest and ran alongside the wooden funnel, beating the timbers with rods. The first troshae appeared, shadows striping along its flanks as it entered the clearing and ran into the wooden funnel. The people around Gurgeh murmured in anticipation.
"A big one," Yomonul said appreciatively as the golden-black striped beast loped six-legged down the run. Clicks all around the platform announced people preparing to fire. Gurgeh lifted the stock of the rifle. Fastened to its tripod, the rifle was easier to handle in the harsh gravity than it would have been otherwise, as well as being limited in its field of fire; something the Emperor's ever watchful guards no doubt found reassuring.
The troshae sprinted down the run, paws blurring on the dusty ground; people fired at it, filling the air with muffled cracking noises and puffs of grey smoke. White wood splinters spun off the run's timbers; puffs of dust burst from the ground. Yomonul sighted and fired; a chorus of shots burst out around Gurgeh. The guns were silenced, but all the same Gurgeh felt his ears close up a little, deadening the racket. He fired. The recoil took him by surprise; his bullet must have gone way over the animal's head.
He looked down into the run. The animal was screaming. It tried to leap up the fence on the far side of the run, but was brought down in a hail of fire. It limped on a little further, dragging three legs and leaving a trail of blood behind it. Gurgeh heard another muffled report by his side, and the carnivore's head jerked suddenly to one side; it collapsed. A great cheer went up. A gate in the run was opened and some males scurried in to drag the body away. Yomonul was on his feet beside Gurgeh, acknowledging the cheers. He sat down again quickly, exoskeleton motors whirring, as the next animal appeared out of the forest and raced between the wooden walls.
After the fourth troshae, several came at once, and in the confusion one scrambled up the timbers of the run and over the top; it started to chase some of the males waiting outside the run. A guard, on the ground at the foot of the stand, brought the animal down with a single laser-shot.
In the mid-morning, when a great pile of the striped bodies had accumulated in the middle of the run and there was a danger some animals would climb out over the bodies of their predecessors, the hunt was stopped while males used hooks and hawsers and a couple of small tractors to clear the warm, blood-spattered debris. Somebody on the far side of the Emperor shot one of the males while they were working. There were some tuts, and a few drunken cheers. The Emperor fined the offender and told them if they did it again they'd find themselves running with the troshae. Everybody laughed.
"You're not firing, Gurgeh," Yomonul said. He reckoned he'd killed another three animals by then. Gurgeh had begun to find the hunt a little pointless, and almost stopped firing. He kept missing, anyway.
"I'm not very good at this," he said.
"Practice!" Yomonul laughed, slapping him on the back. The servo-amplified blow from the elated Star Marshal almost knocked the wind out of Gurgeh.
Yomonul claimed another kill. He gave an excited shout and kicked Flere-Imsaho. "Fetch!" he laughed.
The drone rose slowly and with dignity from the floor. "Jernau Gurgeh," it said. "I'm not putting up with any more of this. I'm going back to the castle. Do you mind?"
"Not at all."
"Thank you. Enjoy your marksmanship." It floated down and to the side, disappearing round the edge of the stand. Yomonul had it in his sights most of the way.
"You just let it go?" he asked Gurgeh, laughing.
"Glad to be rid of it," Gurgeh told him.
They broke for lunch. Nicosar congratulated Yomonul, saying how well he'd shot. Gurgeh sat with Yomonul at lunch, too, and went down on one knee as Nicosar's palanquin was brought up to their part of the table. Yomonul told the Emperor the exoskeleton helped steady his aim. Nicosar said it was the Emperor's pleasure that the device be removed soon, after the formal end of the games. Nicosar glanced at Gurgeh, but said nothing else; the AG palanquin lifted itself; the imperial guards nudged it further down the line of waiting people. After lunch, people returned to their seats and the hunt went on. There were other animals to hunt, and the first part of the short afternoon was spent shooting them, but the troshae came back later on. So far, only seven of the two hundred or so troshae released from the forest pens into the run had made it all the way through the wooden funnel and out the far end to escape into the forest. Even they were wounded, and would anyway be caught by the Incandescence.
The earth in the wooden funnel in front of the shooting platform was dark with auburn blood. Gurgeh shot as the animals pounded down the sodden run, but aimed to just miss them, watching for the spatter of muddy ground in front of their noses as they tore, wounded and howling and panting, in front of him. He found the whole hunt somewhat distasteful but could not deny that the infectious excitement of the Azadians had some effect on him. Yomonul was obviously enjoying himself. The apex leant over as a large female troshae came running out of the forest with two small cubs.
"You need more practice, Gurgey," he said. "Don't you do any hunting at home?" The female and her cubs ran towards the wooden funnel.
"Not much," Gurgeh admitted.
Yomonul grunted, aimed at long range and fired. One of the cubs dropped. The female skidded, stopped, went back to it. The other cub ran on hesitantly. It mewled as bullets hit it.
Yomonul reloaded. "I was surprised to see you here at all," he said. The female, stung by a bullet in a rear leg, swung growling away from the dead cub and charged forward again, roaring, at the tottering, wounded cub.