The Iron Councillors gathered everyone who could fight. The laggers, spread out behind them, were called to catch up, for safety. They sped up their track-laying, to reach a point where a few igneous pillars jutted out of the earth, where there were some dry hills, so they would have a little shelter. With the expertise they had accrued over years, they readied to fight.

"He got gone," one wyrman said. He was talking about one of the others on the reconnoitre. "He got gone out the air. Something come pull him out the air, see?"

There were none of the chances Cutter had wanted, no opportunity to tell the stories of the Collective, to ask for the stories of the Council. It was rushed and ugly. He felt desperately angry as the Councillors prepared to die. He felt as well a sense of his own failure, that he was letting down Judah. You knew I couldn’t do it, you bastard. That’s why you’re still there. Getting ready some plan or other for when I fail. Still, even though Judah had expected it, Cutter hated that he had not succeeded.

No one slept that night. Councillors came to the train throughout the darkness hours.

With the first light Cutter and Thick Shanks withdrew into position, each on a stele twenty feet high, yards apart, both facing the sun, holding one of Judah’s mirrors. Before he went, Cutter found Ann-Hari, to try to tell her that she was having her sisters, the Councillors, commit suicide. She smiled until he had finished.

"Our hexers have what Judah gave them," she said. "We have our own thaumaturgy. And we have what Judah taught us. There are those’ll be calling golems from the traps he gave us."

"Each time you trigger one, he’ll feel it, you know. No matter how far he is."

"Yes. And we’ll trigger all of them. One at a time. As the militia come. If we have to."

"You’ll have to."

Cutter and Thick Shanks braced themselves each on their rock shaft. It was a little after dawn. The moon was still visible, pale and high. As the sun rose its light struck their mirrors, and Cutter angled his down, directing his beam at the cross-mark he had made on the ground. Thick Shanks did the same, as Cutter had shown him, and the spots of intensified sunlight roamed like nervous animals over scrub and dust, to blend on the X.

Hundreds of Councillors prepared to fight, spread out in waves to trenches and earthworks, propped rifles. Cutter turned west, to where the militia would come.

It was not long. At first he saw only dust. Cutter looked through his telescope. They were still tiny, and they did seem to be very few.