Tanner struggles. He is unable to think in words. The shells begin once again to pound the water around him, to make it into a bloody broth of metal and the dead.

The air sparks. Elyctro-thaumaturgic quarrels burst from the Crobuzoner vessels; arbalests hurl vats of strong acid. But now, even broken as they are, the remnants of the Armadan fleet fight back.

They fire shells the size of men, which smack into the Crobuzoner dreadnoughts and open in ragged metal flowers. Wooden warships sail into range, weaving between enemies, and their cannons sound, denting slabs of armor, breaking through smokestacks, and snapping the moorings of guns.

The Trident and its airborne flotilla have reached the sky over the Crobuzoner fleet. They begin a sporadic deluge of missiles: gunpowder bombs; oil skins that burst open as they fall, raining sticky fire; weighted darts and knives. Aeronauts snipe at Crobuzoner captains and gunners. The heat from the explosions rocks the dirigibles and knocks them off-course.

Still the Armadan ships approach. They fire and come closer and explode and capsize and burst into flames and still come closer, their crews doggedly driving them toward the dreadnoughts.

A mass of dark bodies rises.

Crobuzoner thaumaturges, channeling puissance from batteries and their own bodies, have animated flocks of golems: clumsy constructions of wire and leather and clay, inelegant and rough-hewn, with claws like umbrella’s innards and clear glass eyes. Their ugly wings beat frantically to bring them skyward. They are strong as monkeys, mindless and tenacious.

They grip the ankles of the Armadan aeronauts and scrabble up their bodies, ripping open their flesh and tearing their balloons apart, sending them bleeding into the decks below.

Golems rise like smoke from the Crobuzoner fleet and slam themselves into the steering cabins and windows of the Armadan airships, blinding them, shattering their glass, slicing the fabric of their gasbags. Many fall, their bodies broken by gunfire and swords and gravity, collapsing into their lifeless inanimate components on their way down; but scores stay airborne, harrying the Armadan air fleet.

The air above the battle seems as thick as the sea. It is viscous and sluggish with the discharge from guns and fire-throwers and catapults; with sinking dirigibles bleeding dry of gas; with hunting golems and blood-mist and gouts of soot.

There is a terrible slowness, a solemn care behind every motion. Every cut, every crushing blow, every bullet boring into eye and bone, every belch of fire and bursting vessel seems planned.

It is a sordid pretense.

Through the murk Tanner can see the undersides of the enemy’s boats, and surrounding them a hundred shapes: darting spiral vessels, single-person subs in the shells of giant nautili. The Armadan submarines scatter the little craft, ram the iron flanks of the dreadnoughts, rear up like whales.