Tallulah shook her head. 'I honestly don't know,' she said.

After lunch, which was eaten by the side of the muddy road, Harker announced that they'd be marching again.

'Okay, now that's just bad for digestion,' Eve said.

'Tough,' Harker said. 'Form up!'

Eve refused to move.

The Lance-Corporal tugged on the handcuffs, which hurt, especially as she was clearly much stronger than Eve, but she still refused to move.

'Sir,' the Lance-Corporal said, 'problem.'

Eve, who would have folded her arms if one of them hadn't been attached to the furiously tugging Lance-Corporal, stood her ground and glared at Harker. He heaved a heavy sigh and said, 'All right, come here.'

They did, and when Harker took the handcuff key from his pocket Eve nearly sang in relief. He unfastened the cuff from the Lance-Corporal, who shook her wrist and gave him a grateful look ... and then fastened it on his own wrist.

'What?' Eve shrieked. 'I have to be chained to you now?'

'Shut up,' Harker said, 'or I'll chain you to the back of the wagon and gallop the horses. And don't think I won't do it, 'cos I will.'

He probably would, Eve thought, resigning herself to trying to jog at his pace. It wasn't fair, he was a lot taller than her and he'd have a longer natural stride, and wait, he was climbing into the driver's seat of the wagon.

'Oh, frabjous day,' she moaned, taking the weight off her aching and, she suspected, bleeding feet.

'Squad,' Harker yelled to the men, who were now being led by Captain Haran. Charlie had taken up position at the back of the wagon. 'Quick march!'

They set off at a fast walking pace, and Harker flapped the reins in such a manner that the horses followed suit.

Eve fumed for a while, staring straight ahead at the small group of marching soldiers, watching as Tallulah, who was quite short, kept up with Banks, who was quite tall, while they followed Daz, who seemed to want to go at his own pace, and the Lance-Corporal, who stopped him from doing so.

'She's a good soldier, Martindale,' Harker remarked. 'Make a great sergeant.'

So that was her name. Eve hmphed.

'She'll probably get it when we get back, too. Only trouble is, I've nowhere to put her, and I don't want to lose her. Suppose I could transfer someone else out.'

Eve ignored him, and started unlacing her trainers to get some air to her feet. Yep: at least one blister had burst, and the blood was soaking through her sock.

Unconcerned, Harker lit yet another cigarette.

'Where do you even get them all from?' Eve said, waving away a puff of smoke.

'I buy 'em. What d'you think?'

Eve glared. 'No, I mean ... you can't grow tobacco in this country, can you? You need a hotter environment for it.' Certainly hotter than this weather. Charlie had procured for Eve a rather old and suspiciously patched redcoat, which made her feel like a gigantic target, but at least it was warmer than her t-shirt.

'Yeah. They come from the Americas.'

'Can you afford that?' Eve had no idea what the country's economy was like, but between the rationing and the lack of telecommunications, it didn't look particularly strong.

'Got bugger all else to spend my pay on,' Harker said.

'No, I mean oh, never mind.'

They drove on a while longer. Eve couldn't quite manage to guess where they might be; she didn't even know where they were going. North of London was all she knew. Nothing at all looked familiar, and there were no road signs.

After a while, Harker said, 'Have you ever killed anyone, Eve?'

Eve, who'd been leaning against the side of the wagon, massaging her feet and idly watching the fields roll by, sat up in surprise. 'What kind of question is that?'

'A valid one. Have you?'

'No!'

Harker shrugged. 'I have. Charlie has.' He pointed to the soldiers marching ahead of them. 'Martindale has. Banks I ain't sure about, but being a poacher I wouldn't be surprised if he had before he joined us. And Daz, poor sod, probably has, even if he didn't mean to. Only one I can say for certain hasn't ever killed anyone is Tallulah, and that's 'cos she's only been out of Basic Training a week.' He considered her for a moment. 'Although if she's anything like her sister, she was probably born lethal.'

'I feel so comforted,' said Eve, who honestly hadn't given much thought before that to the idea that she was travelling with a bunch of paid killers.

Why should I care? It's not real. None of this can possibly be real. I hit my head and I'm in a coma.

Only, the presence of the large man to whom she was handcuffed was so utterly real that she couldn't bring herself to believe she was just dreaming. She could smell the damp wool of his jacket, the pungent smoke of his cigarette, the earthy scent of horses and leather and the faint, acrid scent of something she thought might be gunpowder. She felt the heat of his rough skin whenever his hand brushed against hers. When she breathed in, smoke crackled inside her lungs.

If I'm not dreaming then what is this? Have I gone mad? I must have gone mad.

I'm sitting next to a self-confessed killer. Either the world's gone mad or I have. Somehow neither thought made her feel better. Fear, a cold nasty fog that crept around inside her, rose up inside her chest.

'Yeah, well, you should. Reason being this. Do you know how many people, civilians, are killed by strangers? Not many. People only commit murder when they've a damn good reason to.'

'Or if they're insane,' Eve said, wondering if that qualified her. She shoved down the fear. It was no good to her now.

'Yes, all right, but my point is this. People, ordinary sane people, don't go around killing strangers, do they?'

'Not unless they're in the army.'

'Ah,' Harker said. 'Yeah. That's it. Not unless they're in the army. Where it's our job to go around killing complete strangers, often en masse. And that's not something a normal person is any good at. Now, in peacetime, we can happily hire all those psychos who like killing people, although it tends to make a bloke a bit uneasy, sharing a barracks with some bugger who wants to know what your insides look like. In wartime, though, we've a bit of a shortage. Not enough volunteers. Got to start recruiting from the populace.'

'Conscription,' Eve said.

'Yep. And that means we've got a load of men'

'And women,' said Eve, who was still faintly amazed that women were on the front line now. Part of her, the feminist part, cheered, but a big chunk of her cowered.

'Military term, military term,' Harker said, waving his hand. 'We've got a load of men who don't really want to run around murdering complete strangers. It's not a normal human thing to do. The Bible even tells you not to.' He blew out a cloud of smoke, most of which went Eve's way. 'Which is something the padre at the barracks could never quite reconcile to my satisfaction. Anyway. The point is, we've got to take these men, who've been brought up nice, and turn them into people who will kill without a second's hesitation. And do you know how we do that?'

'I don't know,' Eve said, still feeling belligerent. 'Brainwashing?'

'We drill 'em. Day in, day out. From the first minute they put their boots on. Basic Training involves day after day of being shouted at until you obey orders without even thinking. Squaddies don't need to think. They need to obey. They need to have it hammered into them that when their sergeant tells 'em to march, they march. When he tells 'em to run, they run. And when he tells 'em to fire, they get their guns, they aim, and they kill the bloke standing in front of 'em. That's why we drill. Every day.'

'So you can beat the compassion out of ordinary people?'

'Absolutely. Don't you look at me like that. If we didn't then we'd have an army of men who felt sorry for the enemy. And then the enemy'd kill 'em.'

Eve said nothing. She couldn't think of anything to say.

'Now, the reason I have my men marching on a full stomach is this. It's a damn sight better than marching on an empty one.'

'An army marches on its stomach,' Eve said, trying to remember who'd said that.

Harker looked at her like she was mad. 'No, they march on their feet. But they've got to be ready to march at any time. Whether they're tired, or hungry, or hurt even if they have sprained ankles,' he said, looking sideways at her, which Eve didn't really appreciate. 'Whether they've just eaten, or they haven't eaten in three days. When I was defending Newmarket, they had us under siege for weeks and one of their shells hit the food stores. We were on such tight rations I was giving serious consideration to eating my own horse. But I still had to get up and fight, didn't I?'

'Aren't you the hero,' Eve muttered.

'No,' Harker said, 'I ain't a hero. I'm a soldier. Big difference. But the next time you tell me it's bad for my men to march on a full stomach, or with blisters on their feet, or whatever, you consider that there are far worse conditions they're going to have to march in, and fight in, and if I don't toughen 'em up, and keep 'em tough, then I might as well wave a white flag at the Coalitionists right now.'

Eve knew that was intended to keep her quiet, and for a little while she was quiet, remembering every war film she'd ever watched, remembering history classes at school and pictures of soldiers in trenches at Ypres and the Somme. She supposed he had a point. Soldiers had to be tough.

But then, she wasn't a soldier.

'Who are the Coalitionists?' she asked after a while.

Harker made an exasperated sound. 'You ain't very curious, are you?'

'I'm just asking,' she said. 'If they're who you're fighting, and I'm stuck with you, then I think it'd be nice of you to tell me.'

Harker was silent a moment. Then he said, 'Fair enough. The Coalitionists are, in brief, a group of people who think we should take the French up on their offer of a "coalition".'

Eve saw Harker's sneer. She nearly heard his inverted commas.

'A coalition,' she said. 'Like an alliance?'

'Yeah. Well, that's the way they phrased it. But can you see France, the biggest power in the world, forming an equal alliance with a country that gets aid workers what's so funny?'

'France is the biggest power in the world?' Eve said.

'Yeah.' Harker gave Eve a look that she was getting used to. It said, 'You really must be mad if you don't know that.'

'Okay,' she relented, 'I am crazy. But France?'

'The French Empire,' Harker clarified. 'They own a third of the world.'

Eve, whose grandmother had related the story of colouring in the world map and running out of pink when she did the British bits, could only shake her head.

'Anyway. They couched the offer in very pretty terms, but what it basically means is they want to annex us to the Empire. And we don't want that. Well, the majority of us don't. But there were some ministers who thought it'd be a good idea. They developed a bit of a following. It was all just political until they stormed out of Parliament and attempted to get the army behind 'em.'

'And the army said no?'

'The army did. More to the point, General Wheeler did. But two of the MPs who walked out represented Manchester and Leeds, and they raised militia and took over those two towns. Since then, it's been us against them. Parliamentarians against Coalitionists.'

Eve digested this. It all sounded vaguely reminiscent of well, every civil war she'd ever heard of.

'The King declared military rule, and'

'I'm sorry,' Eve said. 'The King?'

'Yes,' Harker said patiently. 'You know, posh bloke, sits on a throne, wears a crown.'

'A king,' Eve repeated. Not a queen. The History of the Untied Kingdom that she'd read hadn't got that far. 'What, uh, what's his name?'

'Charles,' Harker said, and Eve nearly choked on her own breath.

'Charles? Charles son of Elizabeth II?'

'Yep. See, you have heard of him. You know, I'm wondering if you just hit your head or something, I've heard of cases where amnesia's set in'

'Yeah, maybe,' Eve interrupted with a wave of her hand. 'Look. What happened to the Queen? The old Queen?'

'Elizabeth? It was pretty nasty, actually. There was a fire at Windsor Castle and she was killed. Thankfully, Charles and Diana and the princes weren't there, or the whole line might have been wiped out.' Harker chucked his spent cigarette on to the ground, where the wagon wheel rolled over it. 'Plenty of people, of course, reckon that was the idea, but no one's been able to prove it.'

'I remember that,' Eve said, frowning. 'The fire at Windsor.' She'd been a kid, maybe eight or nine, but she remembered news footage of ordinary people helping to rescue priceless works of art. Remembered that the damage had been so expensive the Queen had opened a couple of her houses to the public to pay for it.

Remembered, too, that the Queen hadn't been anywhere near the place at the time, and that arson hadn't even been suggested.

Then something else occurred to her. 'You said Charles and Diana,' she said. 'His wife?' Harker nodded. 'Is she ... still his wife?'

Harker shook his head. 'No. The divorce came through in 1996. I remember that; it was the year I met Saskia.' He laughed, but it didn't indicate that he found anything particularly funny.

'Saskia ... your ex?' Again he nodded. 'What ... happened after that?'

'Well, my CO had recommended me for promotion and Saskia's father bought it well, she denies it, but'

'No, I mean with the the King,' Eve said, although her inner gossip hound shelved that bit of information away for later.

'Oh. Well, not much, really. He has a lady friend, but I think there's a lot of opposition to her becoming queen, what with her being divorced and all. Seems a little hypocritical, seeing as he is, too, but then that's the monarchy for you.'

'His lady friend,' Eve said. 'Would her name be Camilla?'

'It would,' said Harker, looking pleased. 'See, it's coming back to you. And Diana's walking out with an Egyptian guy; it's because of him we get imports of things like'

'Wait,' Eve said, with such urgency that Harker hauled on the reins and stopped the wagon. 'Diana's alive?'

Harker gave her a strange look. 'Of course she is.' His eyes narrowed. 'Why, shouldn't she be?'

Realising she probably sounded like a terrorist, Eve said quickly, 'Oh, no I mean, yes, I just thought ... never mind.'

Diana was alive. Wow. Did the tabloids still put her on their front pages?

They reached the Devil's Dyke a few hours after nightfall, and Harker started handing out duties before the wagon even stopped rolling.