Judah strode through the fusillade. He was bellowing but Cutter could no longer hear what he said, only ran to protect him. The New Crobuzon militia, yards off, were shouting and firing blindly down the hill. Judah Low reached a pile of Galaggi dead.

The somaturge shoved his hand among the cadavers and barked. There was a fermentation as the world’s energy was channelled, the moment bowed and swelled and spat out strangeness. And the corpse-pile stood in a new configuration, a golem of flesh still twitching as the nerves within it died.

It was a shambles of the recent dead, gory and dripping. It walked in the base shape of a human: five, six bodies pushed together without respect for their outlines. The golem’s legs were stiffening corpses, one inverted, its dead head become a foot, crushed and made more shapeless with every step; the trunk a coagulate of arms and bones; the arms more dead; the head more of the Galaggi dead; the whole aggregate stamping at terrible speed up the hill, leaving a trail of itself. Leaving screams from the vineyard workers who saw their lost lovers and children reanimated into this grotesquerie. It walked quickly with Judah behind it, energies spitting from him, connecting him to his monstrosity with an uncanny funiculus.

The militia were pinned by gunshot, and the charnel golem reached them. The thing shed matter as it crested the hill, and the New Crobuzon soldiers who emptied their rifles and motorguns into it bloodied and desecrated it further. But it lasted long enough to smother and punch them to death. It beat them down with blows from the dead men and women that made its fists.

When the hilltop was quiet and the last of the soldiers had fallen, the flesh golem collapsed. It was carcasses again by the time it hit the ground.

The militia dead wore ragged, guerrilla versions of their uniforms, adorned with ears and teeth and obscure symbols for how many dead they had taken. They still wore their masks, every one of them.

Two were still alive. One whom the trumpet had struck down was delirious, raging with occult fever the music weapon had given him; the other had taken Pomeroy’s shot through his hands, and he screamed at his fingerless red messes.

Drogon went through the corpses. It would not be long before the main force at the chelona sent scouts after this little death-squad.

Judah was tired. The golem he had made-so big, so quickly-had taken energy. He searched the dead captain-thaumaturge whose fold-up golem he had so easily deactivated. He took her accoutrements: batteries, chymical vials, and hexstones.

He would not meet Cutter’s eye. He’s shamefaced, Cutter thought. Because of his little display. Judah stalking up the hill like some vexed spirit, infecting the dead with a kind of life. Judah was a golemist of extraordinary puissance and expertise: since the Construct War had forced the rich to replace their steam-driven servants, his skills had made him wealthy. But Cutter had never seen Judah Low acknowledge his power or revel in it until that deadly walk behind the corpse-giant.