The woods closed in on them, dark and murderous, full of fear and madness.

Manoeuvring the wagon up the path towards the Causeway, which seemed to Eve to be the wrong direction entirely, Daz halted suddenly when he heard a burst of fire and the muffled command, '9th of Foot! Advance! Slow and easy, men!'

'They're still fighting,' Eve said, her eyes darting around, desperately trying to see through the fog. 'Should we, er, should we be here?'

Daz gave her a look. 'We're not going near them,' he said. 'We're going west.'

'West?' Eve hitched up the loose coils of chain looped over her shoulder.

'Towards the barricades.'

Again with the towards. Towards was bad. She grabbed his arm. 'Are you mad?'

'No. I'm a doctor.' At her look, which Eve suspected resembled a startled goldfish, he explained, 'Heaviest casualties will be where the barricade was breached. And probably least fighting, too. Come on.'

She hurried after him, encouraged by the part about 'least fighting'. 'Er, did I tell you I've no medical experience?'

'You'll learn. Amazing how fast it comes on a battlefield.'

'Have you, er, been on many?'

Daz shook his head. 'Not while they were actually fighting. Been in plenty of field hospitals, though.'

Eve had a sudden recollection of the Gone With The Wind scene where all the wounded were laid out along the railroad tracks, and nearly threw up.

Large shapes, taller and broader than the windswept trees, appeared in the fog. Buildings.

The remains of buildings.

The stench hit her, even through the fog, as they approached the smoking skeleton of a timber-framed cottage.

A collection of wounded soldiers had already amassed in what Eve assumed had once been the village of Christchurch. Now it reminded her strongly of the No Man's Land south of the Thames, except that this one came complete with bodies, and fresh blood. Several buildings were still on fire.

'Oh God, it's like the devil's barbecue,' she said, stuffing her sleeve over her nose. Daz gave her a look, but tore off a strip of bandage and told her to cover her mouth and nose. It made breathing more bearable, but now the problem was that the fire was burning away the mist, and she could see.

She could see the rubble, the overturned cart, the dead dog in the middle of the road. Somehow, that was the most upsetting thing.

Until she saw what was waiting for her inside the church.

As the only stone building in the village, it hadn't been burned or knocked down by whatever monstrous weapons the enemy had been using, and so it was being used as a shelter by the soldiers too badly hurt to move any further.

Daz immediately ran to the closest and started checking him over, but Eve stood, horrified, as the stench of the dead and the dying overwhelmed her. It smelled like a sewer, and Eve wasn't sure if she'd prefer that to have been because someone had been using it as a toilet, or because someone's innards had been cut out. The sharp, hot tang of blood was everywhere, creeping inside her nostrils and taking up residence. Over it all hung the smell of burning flesh, like a lamb chop that had caught fire on an open grill. Eve didn't want to know where exactly that was coming from. She had an awful premonition that Daz was going to ask her to find out.

'Eve,' he said, tugging on the chain for her attention. 'Eve! Help me. Set up a triage.'

'What?' Eve said, dazed. I can't do this. I don't want to be here. I can't do this.

'A triage!' He was already moving on to the next soldier. 'Sort out who's most in need of help. Get the ones who can walk on one side of the church. Anyone who's unconscious, check for breathing and heartbeat. You can do that, can't you?'

Eve looked around helplessly, a muddle of excuses tripping from her lips.

'Eve, these people need your help.'

A woman not much younger than Eve met her eyes. There was blood all over her jacket, which was stuck to her body. A long rip ran across the middle of it.

Eve swallowed. 'Yes,' she said, 'I can do that.'

Chapter Ten.

Eve straightened up, her back screaming in agony. She ignored it. Right now, it seemed ridiculous to complain about back pain when she'd just assisted Daz in chopping off a man's arm.

She'd vomited the first time he'd done it. But that was because she'd kept her eyes open while he cut through the bone with a curved knife.

'Eve, compression,' he said, and she nodded and pressed both hands over the cloth that was doing little to stem the blood pumping from the soldier's elbow. Daz, who'd already done something to the veins and arteries that involved thread and very bloody hands, rethreaded his needle and grabbed the flap of skin he'd left hanging from the man's forearm. As Eve removed the cloth, Daz began to sew the flap over the stump, like some obscene sort of dressmaking.

The soldier, thank God, was unconscious. Partly due to the morphine Eve had given him, and partly, she suspected, due to shock.

Relief had come a while ago maybe minutes, maybe hours all Eve knew was that it had turned dark at some point and someone had brought oil lamps. The church had become a field hospital, and the pews were full of men and women waiting to be treated. Trestle tables and beds had been set up. Medical staff bustled. Outside was a tent where more soldiers were being carved and stitched.

Daz was performing amputations on the altar, a fact which Eve was sure was going to make her burst into hysterical laughter at some point. Maybe when she was less busy.

When the medical staff of whatever unit had arrived, Daz had said to Eve, 'You can go now, if you want.'

And Eve, who'd spent the whole time she was assisting Daz praying violently for something to take her away from this, found herself shaking her head.

'No,' she said. 'There's still not enough staff. I'll help. Besides,' she said with what might, in other circumstances, have been a smile, 'I'm still chained to you.'

He unshackled her, but Eve volunteered to stay. She didn't think she could just go and sit outside and allow her conscience to beat her over the head while Daz was still working.

Now the sky outside the church windows was dark, and her back ached, and her clothes were saturated with blood, and even the stench of entrails and burned flesh wasn't overpowering any more. Outside someone had lit a brazier, out of sight of the troops, where the amputated limbs were being burned, although thoughtfully, it had been placed downwind.

She was wrapping a tight bandage around the arm stump when Daz said, 'Hey, that's it. No more amputations.'

'Yet,' Eve said, not looking up. 'They still haven't brought everyone in. I heard someone say they were just five miles north of the Causeway before the reinforcements got there. That's a lot of ground to cover.'

'Yes,' said a voice behind her, 'but we were in line formation, so we found them as we came back.'

Harker. Eve glanced up briefly at him before returning her gaze to the bandage. He looked like hell. 'I was wondering when you'd turn up.'

'I said I'd come back.'

'Expected to see you on this table.'

'Oh, cheers. You think I'd survive sixteen years as a soldier just to get my arm cut off?'

'You got your finger cut off,' Eve said, getting to the end of one bandage and reaching for another to knot on to it.

'Aye, and that was enough.'

She was aware of Daz and Harker looking at each other over her head. They were communicating something, but she was too tired to care what.

Then Daz took the bandage from her hands and said, 'All right, Eve, I'll take it from here. Time you got some rest.'

'I'm okay,' Eve said, which wasn't even remotely true. A small part of her knew she was in shock, that she was operating automatically. It was exactly how she'd functioned in the days and weeks following that brown envelope from the tax man. All throughout the phone calls and the horrifying figures and the hearings and the paparazzi, she'd retained a kind of numbness.

In three years, it hadn't entirely worn off. Until the blood and fear and stench had slammed through the lack of sensation and woken her up.

On balance, Eve preferred the numbness.

'No, you need to rest,' Daz said. 'Doctor's orders.'

Eve closed her eyes for a second and wondered if she'd ever be able to open them again.

'Banks has another stew on the go,' Harker said. 'Got real beef in it, too.'

'Really?'

'Yeah. Shame to let a dead cow go to waste.'

For some reason, that tipped Eve over the edge, and she turned away, bile rising in her throat, and only just made it outside before she threw up again.

Gulping in fresh air, realising just how fetid it had become in the church, she sat back against her heels and wiped her mouth.

'Eve? Oh my goodness, are you all right?'

It was Tallulah, hurrying over, looking horrified. Eve nodded, but Tallulah was staring at her and she realised she was so soaked in blood she looked like an entrant in the world's most macabre wet t-shirt competition.

'Oh, it's not mine. I was helping Daz.'

Harker came out of the chapel, glanced down at Eve, then said to Tallulah, 'Go and call off Martindale. And see if you can find some clean clothes for Eve and the doc. And some soap and water.'

Tallulah nodded, and ran off. Harker hauled Eve to her feet. 'Better?'

She nodded. 'What's Martindale doing?'

'Looking through the bodies for you and Daz.' Harker took off his greatcoat and propped it around her shoulders.

'No, I'll get blood on it ...'

'It's seen worse,' Harker said, and closed the coat in front of her. Eve, shivering, let him, and when he strode away, she followed him. A camp had appeared, tents stretching away in the darkness, fires flickering against the ruins of the village, snatches of laughter and music penetrating her hearing.

'So, the squad,' she said, and faltered. 'Are they I mean, did you?'

'They're all fine,' Harker said. 'And we won, by the way.'

'Yes, I heard.' Realising something else was needed, she added, 'Er, well done.'

Harker flashed her a look that had half a smile in it. They detoured around a clutch of tents, open to the night air, steam escaping from the large tubs of water within. Men and women scrubbed at sheets bearing pinkening stains. Eve turned her head away, towards the vastness of the camp.

'How many people are there here?' she asked.

'Dunno. Probably a thousand, all told. Maybe more. Mostly this is the 33rd, who finally deigned to grace us with their presence. There were only a few hundred of the 9th left, poor buggers, no wonder the barricades fell.'

He walked her past a rather hastily constructed corral, heavily guarded by men with large guns. Peering past them, Eve saw men in uniforms that were khaki, but different from the ones she'd seen so far. They had a more modern look to them, whereas Harker and the rest seemed to be wearing something from a WWII costume drama.

'Are they prisoners?' she asked, looking at the sullen men within. Funny, but they all seemed to be men. Or maybe the women of the Coalitionist army had been put somewhere else.

'Yep.'

'What's going to happen to them?'

'Probably round 'em up and shoot 'em in the morning.'

Eve flinched. So did the prisoners within hearing range. To her surprise though, Harker didn't stop and admit her to their ranks, but walked on past. He murmured softly as they left earshot, 'Actually they'll just be sent to POW camps to make munitions and roll bandages. But I can't resist winding 'em up.'

Eve nodded, her head bobbing back and forth, back and forth, like the bobble-head dolls Grrl Power had promoted somewhere in a universe far, far away. As Harker took out a cigarette and lit it, she found herself watching longingly.

He saw her, and said, 'That's a very hungry look for someone who doesn't smoke.'

'Well, maybe I should.' Maybe it'd soothe her shaking nerves.

'Nah. Filthy habit.' Harker blew out a stream of smoke. He was holding the cigarette in his left hand, she noticed; he always held it in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, his palm cupped around it.

'What happened to your finger?' she asked.

Harker glanced at his right hand. 'French sabre,' he said.

'You fought the French?'

'No,' he gave her another of those half-smiles. 'But they were supplying weapons to the rebels.' He lifted his hand, looked at the scars crisscrossing it. Eve, with the experience of the past few hours behind her, could tell it hadn't been a wound that had received a lot of attention.

'Bastard tried to cut the sword out of my hand,' he said. 'Kept hacking at it. Had to learn to do everything left-handed while it healed.'

'Can you use it properly now?' Eve asked, because in all honesty she'd never noticed him holding a pen or doing anything that involved fine motor skills. Except for smoking, of course.

'Oh aye, it's fine now. Aches a bit sometimes, but it works all right. Got off lightly. I know plenty of old soldiers who get pain in limbs they don't even have any more. Phantom limb, they call it. Bloody unfair, if you ask Eve?'

She felt herself wavering, as if her bones weren't strong enough to keep her solid, as if she wasn't quite sure which way was vertical. The tents ahead of her tilted.

Daz had been using the altar for amputations.

She started to laugh.