"Here’s how it will be. They’re waiting for you. The Collective’s dead. You know that, yes? And the militia knows you’re coming. They’re waiting. They know where you’ll arrive. To the sidings, the terminus we built. There’ll be plenty of them."

There would be battalions. There would be whole brigades. Lined in rows, with their guns, with a patience of mass murder. They were waiting for their quarry to come, enter the fire and iron, the hotspit thaumaturgic carnage, at their own pace. No light golem, no moss-magic, no braveheart resistance of the fReemade and their kin, no cactus savagery, no shaman channelling, would defeat that massing.

"You’ll die. I’m here to tell you that." He said it not like a warning, but as part of a conversation. He’ll not intercede again. This fucker helped for some religious craziness, some mercantile madness. Even against the government. But now we’re back he’s done with that. We’re home, we’ve done what’s needed, he has the way. He can do what he’s always wanted. It’s in Drogon’s head, the bastard, in the tracks we left.

"I want you to know you are magnificent. Such a brave thing, so strong. Like nothing I’d imagined. Well done, well done. You can end now.

"I tell you why I tell you this.

"It wouldn’t be seemly for you not to know. You should know what you’ve become. When you turn those last curves, and see the trainyard, and the militia."

Cutter shook. Drogon watched him.

"Or you could go."

Cutter’s heart beat faster as if it were only with the saying of it that Wrightby made it possible. As if he were giving him permission to escape. "You could go. Drogon wanted you to have that choice. That’s why I’m here."

Drogon? Did you? Cutter had the strength, just, to move his eyes and look at his erstwhile companion. The ranch-hand hatted killer did not look up. Such attenuated camaraderie. What was this? Some last chance, granted to Cutter. I always had a chance, he thought, though he felt as if Drogon had given him a present.

"You’ve ridden history across the Rohagi steppes. You’ve made the TRT a truth though its name was always a lie before. It did-it crossed a continent. You can go now.

"Or. Or you could help us. You could help us cross back again. Once more. Leave the tracks behind us this time." Wrightby looked at him and Drogon did not. "Drogon’s told me your facility, how you’ve learnt to travel, to grade, to scout. And you were always your own man. We know that. You could help us."

Gods, Jabber, Jabber and shit, godspit, godshit, you ain’t saying that. You ain’t. The true of it. A revelation. So. Even through Drogon’s disabling hex, Cutter sneered.