Iron Council

There isn’t far. They would be there by noon perhaps, at the end of the line, to the ranks of military in the sidings. Only a few miles left. “I’ve a plan,” Judah said. Gods. Gods. He’s here.

Overhead the Iron Council wyrmen flew in both directions. Their outflyers would soon be at the city.

Cutter was on horseback, the easy long gallop he had learnt over the months he’d become a wilderness man. He could almost keep up with A

Rahul’s strides pounded, and he ran below the scree and pebble litter with the risen wall of the roadbed a windbreak beside him, dandelions and weeds in its slanted flank. Cutter rode where the wind was most resentful, throwing dust in his eyes. He ignored it. He pushed on under clouds that moved with sudden urgency and sowed rain nearby. He looked to the tracks, he looked ahead. He was beside the rail.

“Just come with me then if you want,” he had said to A

He had failed Judah, and he had to see him, unsure as he was what he sought to do-to persuade Judah to turn the Council if he could, to explain himself, to have him accept Cutter’s regret that he had failed. When the horse-guards blocked him he demanded they summon A

She affected impatience but he saw her start. She said she would come. “Whatever. Escort me if you don’t trust me, I don’t care, but there’s only a few hours left, and I have to fucking see him.”

What’s he doing?

Then. In the lands nearest New Crobuzon. Where rivers crossed under the raised road, and the stones that gave cover were gnawed by acid rain. Foothills stretched out their legs and rucked up the land in untidy grass, where the piceous thick of Rudewood like a black and black-green rash tided toward the train’s path and even in places stretched sparse little hands of forest to the edges of the track. Cutter, Rahul and A

The perpetual train was quickly invisible behind them, the rails, newly renewed, meandering. Cutter rode as if he were alone, beside the metal raised like proud flesh, like slub in the land’s weft. There were some refugees still lining the iron who waved him on, but most had run to be with the train itself. He ignored the halloos- Where’s the Council? Come to save us? They’re ahead, boy, be careful. He kept his stare to the tracks, the trackside. The train was no more than an hour behind him.

He felt as if New Crobuzon sucked him in, as if its gravity-the denseness of brick, cement, wood, iron, the vista of roofs, stippling of smoke and chymical lights-as if its gravity took him. The stoned land rose like floodtide toward the line, and Cutter’s horse descended past a place where the roadbed and the country were level. Rahul was beside him. By a meadow of boulders Cutter saw a barge passing. They were near the farmlands. He watched the trackside. The occasional mechanism where a signal might have stood, some meter to read the speed or passage of trains. Here a clutch of stones and metal debris in the train’s path or by its side.

A flock of wyrmen tore back from New Crobuzon, scattered below the fast clouds and screeched at them. “They waiting! Thousands and thousands and thousands! Rows of ’em! No!”

Cutter and Rahul were racing on the eastern side of the tracks, eating the distance, so fast Cutter became hypnotised with it, until after a last turn of rocks the tracks converged at the end of suddenly bleak flatrock land, a stony pool and low marsh where there were wading birds as grey as the environs. At the end of the perfect perspective was a township of sidings, where the rails fa

“Oh my gods.” Judah, where are you?

The troops waited.

“Where’s Judah?” A

“We must have missed him. Come on, I swear he’s here…”

“You know nothing, don’t you, you don’t know nothing…”

“Godsdammit, A

The train would come from the sheltering stone gulley out into that plateau with the New Crobuzon Militia waiting. Cutter saw the train. Come and come through, and the faces of all the Councillors pale when they saw what waited for them, but set with the knowledge that there was nothing else to be done. By the time they slowed the engine the militia would be on them. Nothing was possible except a last bravery, a tough pugnacious death. The knowledge would come over them, and the sweating and terrored faces of all the hundreds of Councillors on the train would toughen again, and the train would speed up. It would accelerate toward the enemy.

Come on, we taken the militia twice before, we can do it again, would come the shouts, lies that everyone would gratefully pretend to believe. Some would whisper to their gods or dead ancestors or lovers, kiss charms that would not protect them. They would shout, Iron Council! and For the Collective! and Remaking!

The Iron Council, the perpetual train, would howl, smoke streaming, the whistles of its cabin shrill, the sounds of its guns a tempest of bullets. The train would come into the zone of the New Crobuzon guns, and in bucking fire and the stretch and split of metal, in the agony shouts of burning dissidents, of fReemade, as hot death took them, Iron Council would end.

Gods, gods.

The Councillors rode back toward the train a few hundred yards. Cutter forced a slower pace. He watched the metal. Last chance. A mile, no more, into the cosseting of the stone surrounds. Again wyrmen overhead, but these ones speaking with different accents, these were city wyrmen come to greet the newcomers. “Come, come,” they shouted. “We’re waiting. Behind militia. For you.” They wheeled and went back toward some trackside machinery. Cutter rode.

“A

Cutter let out a sound. He stopped his horse as Rahul stopped and he and A

“A

“Judah,” Cutter said.

“Come up, come up. What are you doing here? What are you doing? Gods, come up.”

Rahul’s great lizard weight could not take the incline, which slithered under him. He could only wait by the tracks as Cutter and A

Judah was looking at A

They watched, the three of them, watched each other. Here he was, the tall thin grey-haired man Judah Low. What are you? Cutter thought. Around Judah were signs that he had been waiting. A water bottle. The obscure debris of his golem craft. A telescope.

In this place there was no one around them. The last cut before the city. Wyrmen went overhead again and circled, and shouted hysterical warnings as they went.

“What you been doing?” Cutter said. “What are you doing ? They wouldn’t stop, Judah, they wouldn’t turn. I tried…”

“I know. I knew they wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“What happened? In the city?”

“Oh Cutter. Done, it’s done.” Judah was placid, cowish. He looked between Cutter and A

“What’ll we do?” Cutter said.

“There’s nothing to be done, now,” Judah said. “It’s not the same now. The city… it’s changed again.”

“Why are you here, Judah?” A

“Judah!” Cutter shouted, and Judah turned to him.

“Yes, yes, Cutter,” he said. “Of course.” He was calming. “Why did you come here?”

“What have you done, Judah?” Cutter said. But there was a noise, and Judah gave a happy gasp just like a little boy and jumped on his toes, again like a boy. There were tears in his eyes. A smile and crying.

A wraith of smoke emerged a half mile off. The perpetual train. It wriggled up, the discharge, like a soot grub from a burrow, faster, slewing a tight turn through blasted barriers and coming closer. A wind came up before the train and pushed at their faces, Cutter and A

No. Cutter did not know if he spoke aloud. He did not believe there were revolutionists hidden behind the militia. He watched and shouted aloud or in his head, as the Iron Council came through cleft stone and rolled at speed toward death. No.

The flared guard made into teeth, the engine a fetish head, carved with stories, hung with animal spoils, crowded with the toughest warriors, the biggest Remade, the cactacae with scramasaxes ready, roaring, feted by New Crobuzon refugees who ran alongside, who cheered desperately and threw confetti. The second engine, all its follow-ons, the whole tracktop town become militant, become its weapons, the Iron Council become a fighting city. Its wheels beat the iron, smoke gouting from its chimneys, everyone poised to fight, with no plan but the imbecile bravery of forward.