'Private Banks,' he said, 'take one of the horses you can ride? Good. Follow this ditch to the north and keep on for three miles northwest and you will find a river. Fill this,' he chucked a large water can at him, 'and bring it back here. Spot anything we can eat on the way, you shoot it and bring it back. Tallulah, you take care of these three nags and the other one when Banks returns, and Private Banks,' he added suddenly, as the younger man made to ride off, 'when I say shoot something for our supper I do not mean animals that belong to anyone else, do you hear me? You poach another man's livestock, that's a flogging offence. Clear?'

Banks nodded. 'Yes, sir. Clear, sir.' He rode off.

'Lance-Corporal Martindale, the tents, please, and get Eve to help you.' He unshackled himself from Eve and fastened her wrist to a longish chain that was attached to the wagon.

Technically, he knew it ought to be Charlie giving the orders, because whatever her rank, she'd always performed as his sergeant, but a big chunk of Harker remembered being a sergeant himself, and he recalled being happier then than he ever had been since his promotion to the officer classes.

'Charlie, you take first watch. Someone'll relieve you in a couple of hours. Up on top of the ridge, if you please.'

The dyke had been built, however many years ago, by the simple method of digging a big ditch and piling the earth up to one side. It made a pretty decent defence, as Harker had discovered when the Coalitionists had made their advance on Newmarket.

Then, the ridge's height had been supplemented by bodies, and the ditch had been a foot deep in water. Harker rubbed his right hand absently. He'd been made captain after Newmarket, four years after Wheeler had first offered it to him. Four years after he'd married Saskia.

He'd turned it down back then, having come to the unsettling conclusion that his promotions to ensign when he met Saskia, and then to lieutenant when he proposed to her, hadn't been mere coincidences. Saskia, who'd just accepted a wedding gift of promotion to the rank of major, hadn't been thrilled.

Looking back, he probably ought to have learnt something from that.

Since he'd run out of men to collect firewood, excepting Daz who, he surmised, would bring back green twigs and be unable to light them, Harker went off himself to do that, taking the small axe included in the wagon's kit. Mental note, he told himself, make sure Eve has both hands and feet bound at night and chain her out of reach of the wagon.

It was perhaps over the top, but Harker hadn't got where he was by taking silly chances. Well, he had, but not that kind of silly chance.

With a fire burning and the tents up, the camp looked much more appealing. Banks returned with a couple of rabbits, at which Eve looked horrified especially when he proceeded to skin them and set them in a skillet over the fire.

'Fried rabbit?' she asked, going a little pale.

'Nah,' he said. 'Just sauteing it before I chuck it inna stew. Got some vegetables, too, make a nice meal out of that.'

'And where did you get those vegetables, Private Banks?' Harker asked, making the kid jump.

'Found 'em, sir,' he said, his face open and innocent.

'And where did you find 'em?'

'Just lyin' around, sir.'

'Speaking of lying, Private, you'd better not be telling me falsehoods.'

'Would I lie to an officer, sir?'

'I don't know, Banks, would you?'

Banks grinned. 'Honest as the day is long, me, sir,' he said.

'Yes. Unfortunately, it's October, so the days ain't that long, are they, Private?'

Banks continued to grin, but said nothing more.

Banks turned out to be a decent cook, and over bowls of comfortingly hot stew, he entertained them with stories of his thieving days. He didn't seem remotely ashamed of them at all.

While they were eating, Daz turned to Eve and said, 'Tell me about this Internet. What is it?'

Eve blew out a long sigh. 'God,' she said. 'I don't even know where to start.'

'At the beginning,' said Harker, one ear on their conversation and one on Banks's exploits.

'Like with ABC?' Eve asked. 'Right, anyway,' she said quickly. 'The Internet. It's like a ... a worldwide network.'

'You said that bit,' Harker said, and she glared at him. He was beginning to enjoy provoking her.

'What kind of network?' Daz said, and Eve put down her spoon.

'Well,' she said thoughtfully. 'Okay. You asked me if I'd ever temped on a switchboard,' she said to Harker, 'so you know what they are?'

'I know of them,' said Harker, to whom the wonders of technology were a closed book. But Daz was nodding, so she addressed herself to him.

'Right. What you're sending down a phoneline is your voice, yes? You're sending sounds. Do you ... know how they do that?'

'Yes,' said Daz. 'The voice produces acoustic pressure waves, which affect the electrical current being picked up by the transmitter contained in the telephone. The varying electric current is transmitted along a copper wire to the other telephone, making the coil in the receiver move back and forth to reproduce the sounds from the first person through a microphone.'

For a long moment, there was no sound above that of the fire. Even Eve looked stunned.

'Yes,' she said eventually, her voice a little weak, 'that's ... right. Although I think you meant 'speaker' there, at the end, not 'microphone'. A microphone is what you speak into. The speaker is where the sound comes out.'

Daz frowned. 'Is it?'

'Yes. Trust me on that.' She cleared her throat. 'All right. So a telephone can transmit sounds ... in the way you said. What about if the signal could be modified to send pictures, too?'

'How?' Daz said, and Eve looked as if she was trying to work that out ahead of him.

'Well, a similar ... sort of ... way,' she said. 'With ... variations in the current.' She looked at Daz hopefully. He looked back with a similar expression. It was almost comical.

Eve slumped. 'All right,' she said, 'I don't know exactly how it's done. But the basic principle of the Internet is that it sends information through a phone line. I don't know how exactly, but it is to do with those current variations. I think.'

Daz looked a bit disappointed. Harker asked, 'What kind of information?'

'Well,' Eve said, reviving a bit, 'images, for one thing. Static images, but also moving ones. And there's also a method of communication called email. Electronic mail. It's basically a way to send private message online ... er, on the Internet. You have to have a password, and then you can read it.'

'And anyone with the password can read it?' Harker asked.

'Well, theoretically, yes. You have your own email address like a phone number, it's individual and specific. Say, if I wanted to send you a message, an email,' she said to Daz, 'I'd type in your email address'

'Type?' Harker asked. 'Do they use typewriters?'

'Something very similar,' Eve said. 'I'd type in your address and send you the message. And when you wanted to read it, you'd log on er, you'd type in your email address and your password, and then you could read it. So long as you keep that password private, no one else can read it.'

Harker looked at Charlie. She was nodding. 'Yes,' she said, 'I know. This could be what they're doing.'

'What who's doing?' Eve asked brightly.

'Never you mind,' Harker said.

'Oh, cheers, I just sit here giving you the hotsheet on the Internet, which, by the way, is a very complicated thing and not easy to explain to people who've never even seen a television, and you won't even tell me why you want to know.'

'It's a need-to-know thing,' Harker said.

'Well, I need to know!'

'No, you don't.' He stood up. 'Well, troops, I don't know about you, but I'm bloody knackered. Time to turn in. Up at sunrise. See you in the morning.'

'Wait,' Eve said. 'I haven't even told you about Internet porn!'

'You can use it to sell stuff?' Daz said, and everyone else went po-faced.

'Uh, no, not pawn as in shop,' Eve said. Her cheeks were pink. 'Porn as in ...'

She looked around as if for help, and the rest of the squad suddenly found the canopy of trees fascinating.

All except Harker, who grinned at her. 'I think I like the sound of this Internet,' he said. Eve scowled at him, and he winked. 'All right. 'Night, everyone. Sweet dreams.'

Charlie snorted, and Harker went to bed to fight against images of telephones and naked girls, who all seemed to look rather like Eve.

Chapter Nine.

Morning came, and with it heavy mist and a hideously early start. You've got up earlier than this, Eve reminded herself. Remember those days full of planes and rehearsals and interviews and performances? You'd be on the go from six in the morning until after midnight. You had the feet of a ballet dancer and skin like tracing paper.

She shuddered, and thought wistful things about coffee.

An hour after Charlie had barked her awake, the camp was dismantled, the only evidence of it a couple of rectangles of flattened grass and a burnt circle where the fire had been. Charlie and Harker spent some time conferring on their route, pointing and talking about roads on which she half-expected to encounter Bilbo Baggins.

'If we follow this road until we get to the Peddar's Way, that's ... thirty miles just to Downham Market, and if we want to change horses we'll have to stop at the blockade on the Fen Causeway, which is another twenty-odd miles. Charlie, that's another day's travel. Whereas if we go cross country, we can get to the barricade by lunchtime, get fresh horses and be at Boston by nightfall.'

'In this fog? Sir, we've been in that country before,' Charlie said. 'We'll get stuck in the mud.'

'Then we lighten the wagon, carry our packs, and hope we've all lost weight.' Harker glanced up, saw Eve watching them. 'Any bright ideas?' he said.

'Try the A10,' Eve said, which he didn't seem to find funny.

'We go cross country, Charlie,' Harker said, folding up the map with a sort of finality. 'There are markers and things along the way.' He gave Eve a humourless smile. 'And how about this. We send Eve on ahead. That way, if the fen turns marshy, she can warn us.'

'Oh, thanks,' Eve said.

The ground squelched underfoot, but held. Fog crept in patches, sometimes obscuring her view to only a few feet ahead. Even when it cleared there wasn't much to see. Around her the trees were sad, windswept affairs, huddling together in small woodlands here and there. For mile after damp, foggy mile, Eve trudged on, still chained, but ahead of the others, searching out the path, muttering about bloody Harker and the bloody marshes, until he called a halt for lunch and she muttered about bloody cold rabbit meat. On her back was a pack that apparently contained cooking equipment, but into which she was certain Harker had just piled a load of rocks. She fully expected to sink with every step.

At least she wasn't handcuffed to anyone, although she was still attached to the long chain that Harker had put her on last night, like a dog. She'd even slept with it clinking coldly beside her.

Bastard.

Their progress was cautiously slow, so it was mid-afternoon by the time they approached what Harker called the Fen Causeway and which, Eve discerned, was a road running east from Peterborough. As they got closer, Charlie and Harker discussed earnestly how close they should go to the barricades, and whether the whole party should go, or just a couple of them, with the wagon, to change the horses.

As it happened, they didn't get to do either.

The path they were following, itself not much more than a solid bit of ground between the marshes of the fens, had been empty for their entire journey. But within five miles of the Causeway, people started coming the other way.

Lots of people.

Carrying things.

After the third family hurried past, all burdened with suitcases and leading a pig on a piece of string, Harker stopped and said, 'Okay, something's up.'

'You don't say,' Eve muttered.

In the distance, through the fog which had never entirely lifted, more figures were heading their way. Even when she squinted into the distance, Eve found it hard to tell if she was looking at a crowd of people or a huddle of trees. She eventually worked out that the static group was a wood. Harker took off his coat and replaced it with a blanket from the wagon. He handed his sword to Charlie, who hustled the rest of the squad, including Eve, out of sight behind the wagon.

As he walked, Harker's feet trailed in the mud, and Eve thought he might be limping a little. His shoulders visibly slumped and he clutched the shabby, patched-up blanket as if it was his only friend in the world. Eve, who hadn't really paid much attention to his military bearing, aside from noticing how broad his shoulders were, was amazed at the transformation.

He looks even more like a vagrant than usual.

He approached a young couple. The woman was pregnant and the man, carrying a heavy pack, walked with an awkward gait that Eve later realised was because he had a wooden leg. Clearly, if the army was conscripting all able-bodied men, there weren't going to be too many of them hanging around outside of the military.

'Hold a minute, friend,' Harker said, approaching them with an open smile. 'What's the hurry?'

The young man glanced backwards over his shoulder. 'Fighting,' he said. 'The army's fighting the rebels in March.'

'March?' Alarm showed on Harker's face. 'They broke through the barricades?'

The woman nodded. 'Word got to us this morning. They broke right through, and they've been pushing back towards Downham Market. They're taking the whole Causeway.'

Eve saw the line of Harker's shoulders tighten, straighten a little. Beside her, Charlie's movements mirrored Harker's. Eve wondered if the Lieutenant's ears were pricking up under her bushy hair.

'Do you know how far they've got?'

'We came from Tipps End,' said the woman. 'They hadn't got there yet, but a runner came ...' She trailed off, tight-lipped and shaking.

Her husband put his arm around her. 'A runner came from Christchurch,' he said. 'He said only a couple of them got out in time.'

The woman gave a sob.

Eve glanced at Tallulah and mouthed, 'Is this bad?'

Tallulah nodded and whispered right in her ear, 'The barricade was further west. If they've got as far as March, that means they're pushing along the Fen Causeway towards the sea.'

She leaned back, and saw the incomprehension on Eve's face. 'If they close the gap between Peterborough and the sea they could cut us off from the north.'