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.Cutter had heard of them, of course, but could not believe that this onrushing skeletal insectile animal thing he saw only half a second in three and that was a suggestion or a fold of space was the moonthing about which there were so many stories.Oh gods, oh Jabber.“Shanks.get the golem to that thing, now.”But the golem did not walk so fast.It went through the militia at a steady pace, laid out its hands as it came.It took time to touch each man it passed, to smother their heads with its hands and pour light into them, so each burst with light, beams exploding their helmets, shining hard and for yards from their ears, their anuses, their pricks, through their clothes, making them stars, before the golem let them fall.The fegkarion was crawling out of the nothing.“Come on,” Cutter said.The elementalists were withdrawing, gathering around the moon-callers to protect them.They slashed at the golem now and drew its substance with each whip-strike, sent gouts of light spraying.Each lash snapped back Cutter’s and Thick Shanks’ heads.They bled.They kept the thing moving.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
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