He leans out, field glasses to his eyes. Wyrmen defecate their contempt on the enemy as they let their missiles go. One bursts: Avvatry, a truculent bull Judah knows enough to greet, taken apart with fusillade so he reaches the ground more rags than animal.

The Councillors fire arbalests made in iron council’s foundries. They light fuses and send rockfall down on the invaders. Judah knows this is his fight to win or to lose.

Judah stands. He stands on the rampart. Wires trail from him, to batteries, to a transformer. He trembles with bravery.

The men and women with him in his hide-all with some vestige, some trace, of hex, all joined together-cut their hands and wrap wire tight around the wounds. It is a crude engine that links them, to require so vulgar and literal a bleeding, something battered together from found materials. -Give it me, Judah shouts, and Shaun shoves the leads home, and the gutter-motor moans, and those amassed all stagger as it siphons out their strength and funnels it into the clips that puncture Judah’s chest.

A sound comes from him that is impossible to describe. His skin tightens and moves as if someone is pressing their fingers to him. From the dust, men stand. They are in the army’s path. Judah sweats. It spews from him. He moves his hands. The men, the golems, walk in ponderous stride.

There are a score or more. Bigger than humans. Premade and waiting. They walk toward the New Crobuzon Militia. Judah shakes. The weaker of his comrades are passed out. Judah is sweating blood.

The black golems stalk on. One is kicked apart by militia horses. Its torso twitches and tries to claw itself on farther, and Judah quivers as if hit with stones. He hauls on the air, pulls something immaterial into place. The dirt men-things walk into the melee, and the mounts shy around them. Bounty hunters and uniformed militia veer as the golems reach for them. Some golems stand cruciform. Some wrap their arms around struggling quarries. Where he can see to direct them, Judah has them push with their abnatural strength through bodyguards to embrace officers. Crowds of the fighters surround each one, hacking the mineral bodies, levelling their pistols.

-Shoot dammit! Judah gasps. And though his enemies cannot hear him they obey. A bullet grinds into one of the figures. The golem is made of flint and gunpowder.