There are still hundreds of bounty-men and militia but they are reeling, their commanders screaming, their mounts’ hooves slipping on the mulch of their dead. And the wyrmen come back, and the Councillors make more rockfalls, and the arbalestiers send their huge bolts.

-Low! the men shout. -Yes! And Judah Low roars back at them.

Iron council raiders descend, the hugest Remade, cactacae braves with picks and heavy hatchets. Judah is tugged back and kissed. His comrades are sallow, trembling and cold from the energy he borrowed, but they are stronger than he. Judah closes his eyes.

He passes out, manhandled to safety. He dreams of gunpowder golems, and the sun, and then he is suddenly awake.

-What, what? he says, lurches up. -What, what?

Thick Shanks and Shaun point east, up, into the air. -There are more of them. They’ve attacked the train.

Judah and Shaun ride on a horse reconfigured for speed. Judah is numb. The loud and random bounty-men-and-militia army was an unsubtle distraction.

What will you do, golemist? he asks himself. What will you do to stop them? You ain’t going to stop them; you’re going to die. To die with his council. You’re too broken to do anything now. Look at the blood come from you. But he does not think he will die. Judah would not go if he thought he would die.

There are men in the sky, militia swinging under taut spheres. He sees the smoke of the perpetual train and he can hear explosions. The aeronauts seep bombs, breaking apart the scud-sculptures of the smokestone in a line of craters, drawing a gully toward the council.

What will you do, golemist? Judah asks himself. He will do something. The thing in him, the oddity, the good in him flexes.

People are scrambling away. Refugees again: men, the old, the terrified and wounded, newcomers without loyalty to keep them, women carrying their children, running over the ridges of hard cloud. Judah and Shaun career past them by the tracks. They ride into the battle.

There is the train, firing from its riveted-together guntower. Militia and the Councillors who outnumber but are outfought by them. The sky ahead is unnatural, a matted pewter, stained with colours that should not be there.

Out ahead, protected by cactus and Remade guards, is a track-laying team. They move frenetic, in a sped-up mumming of their usual work, over a rubble of nimbostratus stone. They are picked off by militia targeteers, falling wounded or killed over the rails, and their comrades push them aside and continue their urgent work.

Judah comes in fighting.

The militia will not stop the train: they will kill many but there are only yards left, and even with the cull of track-layers (another man down with a blood-blossom) the train will go through. It is the oncoming aerostats that make Judah afraid. There is the sound of rain in the west, but no rain appears.