'They've got the whole of the Midlands?'

'No, they've got hardly anywhere.' Tallulah looked troubled. 'At least that's what they tell us.'

Charlie tapped Eve on the shoulder and frowned, putting her finger to her lips. Eve nodded and continued to watch Harker talking to the couple on the path, her mind racing.

The Coalitionists only had a little bit of territory. That's what they tell us. But how well informed was Tallulah? Her sister was high-ranking higher than Harker? but how much had she passed on? How much did the average soldier know?

Propaganda. Tallulah and her fellow squaddies probably thought they were winning the war, that there were only a few rebel strongholds to overcome. But if the enemy already controlled Manchester and Leeds her mind composed a quick map then they'd already got a strong foothold in the north. Pushing east from Peterborough was probably only a localised part of the plan. Hell, they could hold the entire Midlands and the average soldier on the street wouldn't know about it.

With any luck there was no such thing in this world as the M62, so crossing the Pennines would be Eve shook herself. This world. It was the same goddamned world as always. All of this was just a ... a dream or a nightmare or a hallucination. Not real. Even if the smell of the horses and the wetness of the mud and the fear creeping through her veins felt pretty damn real.

Beside Eve, Charlie silently took off her pack, quietly placing it into the wagon. She gestured for the others to do the same, drawing from a box several belts of ammunition. Charlie the gundog. She handed the belts silently to Martindale, Banks, and Tallulah, draped one over her own shoulder, and then handed Daz an armband with a prominent red cross on it.

He shook his head and pointed to her ammunition.

Charlie shook her head. Daz mouthed, 'Lieutenant!' angrily. Charlie shook her head again, then tilted it at Harker.

'We've seen no trouble further south,' Harker said. 'Are there many more coming from your village?'

The woman shook her head. Her eyes were huge and frightened. 'No,' she said, 'we were the last. They've all gone on ahead. They'

A muffled boom from behind made her jump. All heads turned in that direction.

'You,' Harker said to the man, shaking out his blanket and straightening his shoulders, 'you've seen service?'

The ex-soldier glanced once at the insignia on Harker's newly revealed jacket and nodded. 'Battle of Southwark, sir. 109th.'

'Right. So you'll keep your lady well out of it.'

He nodded determinedly. 'We were heading for Ely,' he said.

'Good man. Good man. You have any arms?'

After a second's hesitation, the man produced a pistol. Harker grinned.

'Excellent. On your way.'

They hurried off, seemingly unsurprised by the squad hiding behind the wagon, and disappeared into the fog as another boom sounded, louder than the first but still muffled.

'If we can hear that,' Harker said, striding back towards them, 'in this fog ...'

'Then it's much closer than we think,' Charlie said. She took Harker's blanket from him, tossed it into the wagon, and handed him a belt of ammo. Harker took it and gestured for more, which Charlie, rolling her eyes, gave him.

'And for me, Lieutenant,' Daz said, holding out his hand.

'How close?' Eve asked, and was ignored.

'With respect, sir, you're a surgeon, and there's no telling'

'What I might have to defend myself against,' said Daz. 'There aren't many shots in my pistol.'

'Neither should there be,' Harker said, buckling on his sword. 'Non-combat officers are not to draw arms except to defend themselves, General's orders. Is that clear, Captain?'

Daz's cartoon mouth closed tightly. 'Yes, sir,' he muttered.

'Good.' Harker handed him the ammo anyway. 'Best line of defence is attack,' he said with a faint smile.

'Defence?' Eve said. 'We're not going towards them, are we?'

Towards was bad. Very bad. Eve had seen Saving Private Ryan. She'd seen Gladiator. And she'd seen that man with the wooden leg.

'What are we, Eve?' Harker said.

'Well, I'm a prisoner,' she muttered.

'We're the army. We don't run away from a fight.'

Daz climbed into the wagon to retrieve medical supplies, while all around Eve the rest of the squad checked and clicked and loaded things with an efficiency that frightened her. They're killers. All of them. Even sweet pretty Tallulah.

'So you're just going to join in?' Eve said incredulously to Harker, as he slung a machine-gun over his shoulder by its strap, then turned to unharness the front two horses.

'No, I thought we'd take a picnic and sit and watch,' he said, not looking up at her.

'You don't even know what you'll find,' Eve said, fear mounting in her.

'Course I do. Smoke, mayhem, death, blood, the usual.' He didn't look too bothered by it.

'And it's really foggy! How can you even see anything?'

At that, Harker did look up. He grinned. 'Do you know what fog is, Charlie?' he said.

'Ambusher's best friend, sir,' she said.

'See, if we can't see, then they can't see,' he said. 'They don't know how many buggers are sneaking up on 'em.' He patted the top of her head, which Eve found immensely patronising, and said, 'We'll be fine. Done this before.'

Eve, not so terrified that she still couldn't be bolshie, folded her arms.

'Right,' she said. 'Fine. While I do what? I'm chained to this damn wagon. Are you going to leave me here? In case they come this way? Bait? Or have I outlived my usefulness now?'

Fear was making her babble. Dammit, what if she had outlived her usefulness? They were using her as a pathfinder, weren't they? She'd told them about the Internet not enough, but did they know that?

'I can tell you lots more about' she began, but Harker shut her up with a wave of his hand and a noise of disgust.

'I ain't gonna leave you here to get shot and raped,' he said, which made Eve slightly nauseous. 'You're sticking with Daz.'

Daz brandished his pistol with a total lack of skill, and as Eve's chain was fastened to him she thought she might be sick. He could as easily kill her with his ineptitude as the enemy.

I don't think I can convince myself this is a dream any more.

There was another boom, and the spatter of automatic fire. It sounded hideously close. Tallulah's lips got thinner.

Harker handed Eve an armband like Daz's.

'Um,' Eve said, 'I don't know anything about, uh, field medicine or anything ...'

'Don't need to.'

'But ... isn't this a bit dishonest?'

Harker stared at her. 'Right, so when the enemy comes at you, sees Daz and his armband and spares him, and you tell them you were going to wear one but decided not to because you're not a medic and it'd all be a bit dishonest, exactly how long do you think they'll spend listening before they shoot you in the bloody head?'

Wordlessly, Eve took the armband.

Harker checked his map again. 'Right,' he said. 'If we don't find you, meet us in Downham Market.'

He nodded at Daz, which seemed to be his version of an everyday salute, and slung a blanket on the back of one of the horses as a makeshift saddle. Eve watched him mount up to ride into the wood full of smoke, mayhem, death and blood, and blurted, 'Wait!'

He glanced down at her, impatient, and the cold realisation occurred to Eve that she had no idea what she was going to say.

'Come back, all right?' she said. 'Just ... come back.'

He gave her an unexpected wink. 'Count on it. Squad, to me!' he shouted, and cantered off into the woods. The squad followed on foot, like a line of little ducklings.

'They're going to die, aren't they,' Eve said, her stomach churning.

'We're all going to die,' said Daz, then caught her expression and added hurriedly, 'eventually.'

'Advance!' Harker yelled, spraying bullets into the fog. He switched on the toff accent he'd learned while married to Saskia. 'Leave no man standing! Hussars, advance!'

His horse screamed and reared. Poor sod, wasn't used to being ridden, wasn't used to all this noise and terror. In the fog, the woods were an impenetrable nightmare. He and the horse were muffled in their own terrifying little world, possibly miles from everyone else, possibly only a heartbeat. Neither of them knew which until a shape loomed out of the mist, screaming and wielding bloody death.

Harker galloped the horse towards the nearest shapes, yelling and swinging out with his sword. It wasn't a cavalry sword, which meant it was far too short to make any real impact when swung from high up, but it made the soldiers on the ground recoil. Ducking loose bullets any bullet, the next one could be it Harker swung his left arm around a narrow tree trunk, gripped the horse with his thighs and forced it to veer around the tree, back towards the enemy, returning fire as he went. Evidently he hadn't come away with nothing from his marriage to Saskia. Thank goodness for her daredevil brother, who had taught him how to control a horse with no saddle and no reins.

The horse bucked and Harker nearly lost his seat, but sheer bloody-mindedness kept him on, and he shoved the beast back down to the ground, thundering into the man he'd forced back with his sword.

The body squelched as it hit the mud, and a horrible scream bubbled from the man's throat as he died.

Harker wheeled the horse around again, every muscle he had protesting, and galloped off down the line, zigzagging under a hail of bullets, until he'd driven the Coalitionists opposite him back further, and further still. From the mist and the dark woods came the shouts of surprise and dismay as the rest of the squad made themselves known further along the line. Sound bounced around, the direction impossible to distinguish.

Someone screamed, a woman, terrified and desperate. Hoof beats thundered, making the ground shake, and Tallulah, real plums in her voice, commanded an imaginary cavalry brigade forward. Somewhere a tree, having taken too many bullets, groaned and screeched and crashed to the ground. He heard Charlie bellowing in a raw voice, 'Seven Platoon! To me!' and a lot of gunfire from what appeared to be random directions.

In the fog, five men can be fifty. And fifty men can be followed by a lot more.

Good job half the enemy were cowards.

As the first cries of, 'Retreat! Retreat!' drifted through the fog, Harker smiled, and cantered off in the direction of Charlie's rifle. She swung towards him, finger on the trigger, and in the space between heartbeats recognised him and lowered her gun.

Harker grinned. 'Which bugger was it who said God was on the side of the biggest battalions, Charlie?'

'Napoleon, sir.'

'Well, he was wrong. God is on the side of the biggest bastards.'

A shot through the fog wiped the smile from his face. Harker swung down off his horse, slapped its rump, and watched it run away. He didn't blame it.

'Cavalry?' came a voice. 'Identify yourselves!'

Harker winked at Charlie. '75th Infantry,' he said. 'You?'

The darkish shape came closer, clearer. 'Infantry? But I heard ...' he looked at the horse disappearing into the fog, '... horses.'

The speaker was a lieutenant. Quite young, by the looks of him, dirty and wet with marsh gunk and splatters of blood.

Harker clapped him on the shoulder. 'Old trick, Lieutenant.' The kid was even still wearing his cap, with a badge that identified him as 9th of Foot. 'Reckon they're retreating now, but you might want to give the order for a farewell salvo.'

The Lieutenant nodded, but he was looking around without much confidence. 'Yes, sir, but the thing is, we're all a bit broken up by this fog. They don't fight in neat lines, sir, they just ran at us like a mob!'

Harker closed his eyes for a second. Unbelievable.

He opened his eyes. 'Well, that's the enemy for you, Lieutenant ...?'

'Simson, sir.'

'Simson. Enemy ain't got no manners. Right. Well then, I suppose we'd better form your men back up, hadn't we? Who's in charge of the 9th now? Danbury?'

Simson shook his head. 'No, sir. Wounded at Newark. Major Collington had us, sir, but she was one of the first to fall when the barricades came down.' He swallowed. 'They took all of the first line out, sir. Shelled us at the back. We've only a quarter of the men left, sir; at least, we did when the barricades came down.'

'When was this?'

Simson looked at his watch. Smudged some blood out of the way. 'An hour, sir? Maybe more. Can't quite see the minute hand, sir.'

Harker resisted the urge to swear, loudly, because the poor kid looked as if he'd had enough already.

'All right, Lieutenant,' he said. 'You go off, round up as many men as you can, form a line and advance towards the Causeway, firing and reloading the whole time. There's to be no one else enters this bog, you understand? Unless they're civilians, and you send 'em south. When you reach the Causeway, start curving round west, force them back towards the barricades. Got it?'

Simson quavered for a minute, then nodded. 'Yes, sir. I understand.'

'Well, go then!'

Simson ran off, and Harker turned to Charlie. 'You go that way,' he pointed west. 'Do the same. Force 'em east, back on to the barricades.'

'What about the ones who've already gone further east, sir? Past Simson's men?

Harker glanced at the blood already drying on his sword. Never stays clean.

'Those,' he said, 'are mine.'

Mist closed in on Eve and Daz, the rumble of the wagon and the thud of the horses' hooves muffled like the bass beat outside a nightclub. Every now and then something boomed distantly, someone screamed, and fear pounded through Eve until she thought she might shatter.