The proasmae were neglected. The last of them roared through two more gunners then took its bone-and-innard body into the wilds, following its siblings, rolling away from Drogon and Rahul. Drogon kept whispering, but by some thaumaturgy the militia no longer obeyed him. They lashed at him; they lashed at the golem.

“Come on, come on.”

Now the golem’s light-stuff legs stamped through bodies of the men attacking it, and they burst with the shining. The moon elemental was close, was corkscrewing its chill and grey-glowing self through the hole that was opened, and it was vast, Cutter saw, it was monstrous, and he reached and the golem reached to block the lunic cannon, wedging itself into the hole, shoving through the stuff of the elemental itself and into the engine of the machine, and golem and elemental fought, and blistering light-cold, hot, grey and magnesium-white-came welling out of nothing like sweat.

The Councillors saw the proasmae were gone, sent in their heaviest squads, their cactacae and big Remade. “Take some alive!” someone was shouting, and the cactus hacked conscious and light-comaed militia, and there was a burst, a shattering, and the moon-engine combusted in harpoons of golem-light and moonlight.

The militia were broken. Stopped by Drogon and his men, and by the light golem. The ground was scattered with dead elementarii and countless more dead from the Iron Council, with the burst residue of flesh elementals and their victims, with gobs of glow that trickled luminous into the earth. Those few militia still able rode into the wilds of Rohagi, following the slick tracks of the proasmae, which had become a wild herd: wet red blubber things prowling the dustland.

Those militia left were immobilised by bullets, by chakris or golem-light. Lying, spitting and raging at the Councillors as they came.

“Fuck you fuck you,” one man said through the ruins of his reflective helmet. There was fear in his voice but mostly there was rage. “Fuck you, you send us through the fucking stain, you cowards, you think that’ll stop us? We lost half our force but we’re the fucking best, we can chase you wherever you go, and now we know the way through, we found our way, and maybe you got lucky with this bullshit, this bastard lightshow and fucking susurrator. We know the way.” They shot him.

They shot all the militia left alive. They buried their own dead where they could, except for one, a Remade woman famous for mediating during The Idiocy, long before. They voted her a burial on the train’s carried graveyard, in the flatcar cemetery of its greatest dead. They left the militia to rot, and some defiled the bodies.

When the sun rose again on the yag-scorched train, Cutter found Ann-Hari and the Council’s leaders. They were exhausted. Drogon, Rahul and Thick Shanks were with them. Cutter stumbled with his own tiredness. He gripped Drogon and the Remade who had carried him.

“Last time we escaped the militia,” Thick Shanks said. “This time we beat them. We took them down. ” Something of his delight even entered Cutter himself, though he knew all the contingencies that had led to this victory.

“Yeah. You did.”

“We did. You… the light… all of us did it.”

“Yeah, we did, all right. We did.”

“We got out, is all,” said Rahul. Drogon whispered agreement. “We got lost. Came out of that tunnel, well, that alleyway, whatever, into the main part of the town. It took us a while to find where we were. But there was so much going on that night. We never saw nor heard a thing from you. Not from none of you. We didn’t know if you’d fixed that Teshman or not. We’d no idea. You did, didn’t you?

“It took us time to get back to the Collective, but honestly there were so many damn holes we could walk in. When we found out you’d gone-no, I don’t blame you at all, sister, you couldn’t have known we was coming-we had to get back.

“So we smuggled us out, and then old Drogon here goes off for two days and comes back with his brothers.”

“There ain’t so many of us horse-wanderers,” Drogon told Cutter. “You can get word out. I know where to find them. And they owe me.”

“Where are they now?”

“Most are gone. Some ride tomorrow. These men are nomads , Cutter. Give them your thanks, any coin you can share, that’s all they want.”

“We knew the militia was coming,” Rahul said. “We rode hard.”

“You came out of nowhere.”

“We came out of the trails. Drogon knows them. We came fast. I ain’t never known horses like these men’s. Where’s the monk? Talking of secret trails. Qurabin. Oh no… Gods. And Ori? Did he… Ori? Gods, gods. And…”

“Elsie.”

“Oh gods. No. Oh gods.”

“I didn’t think you could do it,” Cutter said to the Councillors. “I admit that. I was wrong. I’m happy. But it ain’t enough. I told you why Judah ain’t here… he’s working on something. In the Collective. But it’s too fucking late. It’s too late. He’s trying to do what he can.

“Listen to me.

“The Collective’s fallen. Shut your mouth, no, listen… The Collective was a… a dream, but it’s over. It failed. If it ain’t dead by now it’ll be dead in days. You understand? Days.

“By the time the Council comes close to the city… the Collective’ll be dead. New Crobuzon’ll be under martial rule. And what then? Killed Stem-Fulcher, it didn’t make a spit of difference: the system won’t be beat-don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it any more’n you. And when you come rolling up saying Hello, we’re the inspiration, on cue, you know what’ll happen. You know what’ll be waiting.

“Every militiaman and -woman in New Crobuzon. Every fucking war engine, every karcist, every thaumaturge, every construct, every spy and turncoat. They’ll kill you in view of the city, and then the hope that you are-you still are-dies when you die.

“Listen. I’ll give you Judah’s message again.

“You have to turn. The Iron Council has to turn. Or leave the train. You come on to New Crobuzon, it’s suicide. You’ll die. They’ll destroy you. And that can’t be. That ain’t acceptable. Iron Council has to turn.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“They’ll destroy you,” he said. “Do you want to die?” he said. “You owe yourself to the world, we need you.”

Of course they would not be persuaded. They continued, pushed through the buckled land leaving the scabs of fight behind them. Cutter showed horror that they would not do as he said, but he had expected nothing else. He made his case and the Iron Councillors answered him in various ways.

Some gave the kind of idiot triumphalism that enraged him. “We beat New Crobuzon before, we’ll do it again!” they might say. Cutter would stare uncomprehending because he saw that they knew what they said was untrue, that it would not be that way. They knew.

Others were more thought-through. They gave him pause.

“What would we be?” Thick Shanks said. The cactus-man etched a cicatrix into the skin of his inner arm, cutting a snake shape with an animal’s tooth. “What would you have us be, bandits? We lived free in a republic we made. You want me to give that up, be a bloody wilderness hobo? I’d rather die fighting, Cutter.”

“We have a responsibility,” Ann-Hari said. Cutter never felt eased in her presence. The fervour in her unnerved him-it made him tired and uncertain of himself, as though she might win him over against his own will. He knew he was jealous-no one had had such an effect on Judah Low as Ann-Hari.

“We’re a dream,” she said. “The dream of the commons. Everything came to this, everything came here. We got to here. This is what we are. History’s pushing us.”

What does that mean ? he thought. What are you saying ?