He can’t take all of them , the man thinks, his courage returning as he stares at the red-drenched figure of Uther Doul below.Even with that godsdamned sword, there are too many, and the Armadan ships are being wiped out. Eventually more Crobuzoner troops will get here, and then we can leave. The man turns and looks out, to where the dreadnoughts are pounding the remnants of the Armadan fleet.

But even as he readies himself again to leave, he sees something.

The legions of tugs and steamers that have surrounded Armada like a corona, hauling it for decades, and that have now been left redundant by the avanc, are beginning to pull away from the city’s orbit and head for the Crobuzoner fleet.

They have been refitted by frantic crews over the last few hours: built up with guns; stuffed full of black powder and explosives, with harpoons and phlogistic cells and batteries and jags welded, bolted, soldered, and screwed into temporary place. None of them is a battleship: none is any match for an ironclad. But there are so many of them.

Even as they approach, a volley from theMorning Walker destroys one with a contemptuous blast. But there are many, many more behind it.

Unseen, the man’s face falters, frozen.I didn’t think… he stutters to himself, silently. I didn’t think of them.

He has told his government everything-he warned them of the nauscopists, so that the Crobuzoner meteoromancers could hide their fleet’s approach; of the airships, so that golems were prepared; and of how many ships they would have to face. The Crobuzoner forces have been calculated to defeat the Armadan navy, which this man has researched and communicated to them. But he did not think to count those useless, age-pocked tugs and steamers, trawlers and tramps. He did not imagine them reckless and stuffed with explosives. He had not pictured them driving across the sea, into the path of an ironclad or a dreadnought, as they do now, firing their pathetic guns like pugnacious children. He did not imagine their crews abandoning them when they were mere yards away, hurling themselves from the sterns of the smoke-spewing ships and onto rafts and lifeboats and watching as their abandoned vessels ram the flanks of the Crobuzoner ships, breaching their inches of iron and igniting, exploding.

There is a smear of dirty colors to the west, and the sun is very low. The crews of the two dirigibles waiting by Dry Fall’s Uroc are impatient.

The Brucolac and his vampir cadre will soon be awake and ready to fight.

But something is changing in the sea aft of the city. The Crobuzoner sailors who have boarded the city are staring in horrified astonishment, the Armadans watching with fierce hope.