Iron Council

Those militia left were immobilised by bullets, by chakris or golem-light. Lying, spitting and raging at the Councillors as they came.

“Fuck you fuck you,” one man said through the ruins of his reflective helmet. There was fear in his voice but mostly there was rage. “Fuck you, you send us through the fucking stain, you cowards, you think that’ll stop us? We lost half our force but we’re the fucking best, we can chase you wherever you go, and now we know the way through, we found our way, and maybe you got lucky with this bullshit, this bastard lightshow and fucking susurrator. We know the way.” They shot him.

They shot all the militia left alive. They buried their own dead where they could, except for one, a Remade woman famous for mediating during The Idiocy, long before. They voted her a burial on the train’s carried graveyard, in the flatcar cemetery of its greatest dead. They left the militia to rot, and some defiled the bodies.

When the sun rose again on the yag-scorched train, Cutter found A

“Last time we escaped the militia,” Thick Shanks said. “This time we beat them. We took them down. ” Something of his delight even entered Cutter himself, though he knew all the contingencies that had led to this victory.

“Yeah. You did.”

“We did. You… the light… all of us did it.”

“Yeah, we did, all right. We did.”

“We got out, is all,” said Rahul. Drogon whispered agreement. “We got lost. Came out of that tu

“It took us time to get back to the Collective, but honestly there were so many damn holes we could walk in. When we found out you’d gone-no, I don’t blame you at all, sister, you couldn’t have known we was coming-we had to get back.

“So we smuggled us out, and then old Drogon here goes off for two days and comes back with his brothers.”

“There ain’t so many of us horse-wanderers,” Drogon told Cutter. “You can get word out. I know where to find them. And they owe me.”

“Where are they now?”

“Most are gone. Some ride tomorrow. These men are nomads , Cutter. Give them your thanks, any coin you can share, that’s all they want.”

“We knew the militia was coming,” Rahul said. “We rode hard.”

“You came out of nowhere.”

“We came out of the trails. Drogon knows them. We came fast. I ain’t never known horses like these men’s. Where’s the monk? Talking of secret trails. Qurabin. Oh no… Gods. And Ori? Did he… Ori? Gods, gods. And…”

“Elsie.”

“Oh gods. No. Oh gods.”

“I didn’t think you could do it,” Cutter said to the Councillors. “I admit that. I was wrong. I’m happy. But it ain’t enough. I told you why Judah ain’t here… he’s working on something. In the Collective. But it’s too fucking late. It’s too late. He’s trying to do what he can.

“Listen to me.

“The Collective’s fallen. Shut your mouth, no, listen… The Collective was a… a dream, but it’s over. It failed. If it ain’t dead by now it’ll be dead in days. You understand? Days.

“By the time the Council comes close to the city… the Collective’ll be dead. New Crobuzon’ll be under martial rule. And what then? Killed Stem-Fulcher, it didn’t make a spit of difference: the system won’t be beat-don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it any more’n you. And when you come rolling up saying Hello, we’re the inspiration, on cue, you know what’ll happen. You know what’ll be waiting.

“Every militiaman and -woman in New Crobuzon. Every fucking war engine, every karcist, every thaumaturge, every construct, every spy and turncoat. They’ll kill you in view of the city, and then the hope that you are-you still are-dies when you die.

“Listen. I’ll give you Judah’s message again.

“You have to turn. The Iron Council has to turn. Or leave the train. You come on to New Crobuzon, it’s suicide. You’ll die. They’ll destroy you. And that can’t be. That ain’t acceptable. Iron Council has to turn.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“They’ll destroy you,” he said. “Do you want to die?” he said. “You owe yourself to the world, we need you.”

Of course they would not be persuaded. They continued, pushed through the buckled land leaving the scabs of fight behind them. Cutter showed horror that they would not do as he said, but he had expected nothing else. He made his case and the Iron Councillors answered him in various ways.

Some gave the kind of idiot triumphalism that enraged him. “We beat New Crobuzon before, we’ll do it again!” they might say. Cutter would stare uncomprehending because he saw that they knew what they said was untrue, that it would not be that way. They knew.

Others were more thought-through. They gave him pause.

“What would we be?” Thick Shanks said. The cactus-man etched a cicatrix into the skin of his i

“We have a responsibility,” A

“We’re a dream,” she said. “The dream of the commons. Everything came to this, everything came here. We got to here. This is what we are. History’s pushing us.”

What does that mean ? he thought. What are you saying ?

“It’s time for us to push through. Whatever happens. We have to come back now, you see?” That was all she would say.

The whispersmith’s friends, his fellow cavalry, disappeared on their horses Remade and whole, becoming dustclouds as they headed east, south. Drogon stayed. Cutter was not sure why.

“What do you want this lot to do? You been in the city… you know we’ll be killed if we go.”

“They’ll be killed maybe.” Drogon shrugged. “They know what’s happening. Who’m I to stop them? They can’t stop now. You set yourself on a rail and it comes to be what you do. They have to keep going.”

This ain’t about argument, Cutter thought. He was horrified by what seemed to him quiescence. If they tried to argue it, they’d lose… but even though they know that, they still go on… because in going against the facts, they change them. It was a methodology of decision utterly unlike his own, unlike how he could ever think. Was it rational? He could not tell.

The Iron Council progressed through a landscape made of mist. The scarps and hillocks, the layers of trees seemed momentary thickenings of water in the air, seemed to curdle out of the vapour as the perpetual train came, and dissipate again in its aftermath.

They moved through scenery that was abruptly familiar, that jogged old memories. This was New Crobuzon country. Siskins went between dripping haw-bushes. This was a New Crobuzon winter. They were a few weeks away.

“We had a man once, years and years ago,” A

“You’re like that. ‘Turn back, turn back.’ “ She smiled. “We don’t hear you no more, man.”

I’ve a mission, Cutter thought. I’ve failed. Knowing that his lover had expected it did nothing to stop his sadness.

He became a ghost. He was respected-one of the world-crossers, who had come to save Iron Council. His dissidence now, his insistence that the Council would die, was treated with polite uninterest. I’m a ghost.

Cutter could have left. He could have taken a horse from the township’s stables and ridden. He would have found the foothills, the deserted tracks, Rudewood, he would have come to New Crobuzon. He could not. I’m here now was all he could think. He would run only when he had to.

He had seen the maps. The Council would go on east leaving spike-holes and the debris of track-pressed shale, recycling the iron road, and would at last hit the remains of the railway scores of miles south of New Crobuzon. And there they would couple to what remained of the old tracks, and steam on, and within hours would approach the city.

Cutter would run when he had to. But not now.

“We are a hope,” A

Perhaps she’s right. The train will come, the last of the Collective will rise, and the government will fall.

In these damp wilds they were not the only people. There were homesteads, little wood houses built on hills, one every few days. A few acres of sloped and stony ground raked beyond the dark underhangs of hills. Orchards, root vegetables, paddocks of dirt-coloured sheep. The hill farmers and families of loners would come out as the Council took its hours to pass them. They stared, skin milky with inbreeding, in the deepest incomprehension at the great presence. Sometimes they would bring goods to barter.

There must be some tradetowns but the Council did not pass any. The news of them-of the rogue train appearing from the west, escorted by an army of fReemade and their children, all of them proud-crossed the wet country by rumour’s byways.

Word’ll reach New Crobuzon. Maybe they’ll come for us soon.

“Did you hear?” one toothless farmer woman asked them. She offered them applewood-cured ham, for what money they had (arcane westland doubloons) and a memento of the train (they gave her a greased cog that she took as reverential as if it were a holy book). “I heard of you. Did you hear?” She gave them proud passage through her paltry lands, insisting they carve their road through the middle of her field. “You’ll be ploughing for me,” she said. “Did you hear? They say that there’s trouble in New Crobuzon.”