'Eve?' said Harker again, from a great distance.

'Like a pagan sacrifice or something,' she giggled. 'Look out, here comes King Kong! What sort of god wants a limb, anyway? That's a bit crappy, isn't it? Like I know! Like one of those eight-armed pagan gods, maybe that's how they got them'

'Eve.' He had hold of her by the shoulders, which was odd because he was such a long way away, and impossibly tall, too, or was he standing on something?

She couldn't stop laughing.

It was forcing all the air out of her lungs; she couldn't breathe; she was sucking in huge chunks of air but it wasn't working, and now it hurt; she was panicking, laughter turning to sobs, she was covered in blood, and he'd been chopping arms and legs off, they fell on the ground and he kicked them away like debris, and there was blood, there was so much damn blood, everywhere 'We'll wash the blood off,' said Harker, and Eve realised she'd been babbling that out loud. They were on the ground, in the mud, and he was holding her as she sobbed and shook and hiccupped with laughter, even though nothing was funny any more.

'Eve, it's all right. It's just shock. You'll be fine.' He was sitting beside her in the mud, his arm around her, just letting her shudder and bawl all over him. The coat had slipped off her shoulders and she was still wet with blood and it was smearing his jacket, but he didn't seem to mind. He was covered in blood.

Her eyes focused on the spatters of dark red flecking his skin.

'Were you hurt?' she quavered, hearing the weakness in her own voice and hating it.

'No. Nothing serious.'

'But there's blood ...' She touched his face, his neck, rough with a week's beard and grimy with sweat and blood. In the hot flickering light of the small fires around them, his dirty skin gleamed.

'Not mine.'

Harker's hand covered her own, and shock travelled through Eve from her palm, right down her arm into her body.

He had grey eyes, the colour of gunmetal. There were smudges of blood and what might have been gunpowder on his face, his hair was tangled and damp with sweat and blood, and she could feel the pulse beating in his neck.

His lips were parted, and she moved towards them without even meaning to.

Towards is bad ...

'Ah, Major Harker! Did you find your civilian?'

The moment broke almost audibly. Harker looked up at a moustachioed man in a suspiciously impeccable uniform and said, 'Yes, sir. This is her, sir Eve Carpenter, Colonel Wilson.' He looked back down at Eve, in whom mortification was rising fast, and added, 'Touch of shock, sir. She was helping in the hospital.'

'Ah, yes. Not surprised.' Wilson loomed over Eve and said in a loud voice, 'Always a shock first time, my dear! Don't worry, it's all sterling work!'

Eve looked back up at him and said, 'I'm in shock, I'm not deaf.'

Besides her, she felt Harker's shoulders shake in what felt suspiciously like a chuckle, but she was too embarrassed to look at him. He still had his arm around her. She'd tried to kiss him!

'Ah. Yes. Capital,' said the Colonel, looking a bit wrong-footed. He recovered quickly, however, and said, 'Young Harker here saved the day, dontcha know! Handful of men against hundreds of filthy rebels. Absolutely capital. There'll be a medal in this for you, Harker, mark my word.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harker said. He picked up the squashed half of his cigarette from the mud and shook his head. 'Sir, if I could beg a favour?'

Wilson beamed. 'Of course, Harker! Anything you need.'

Harker, somewhat apologetically, left Eve sitting on the ground, where she started to feel a little bit foolish, while he spoke in hushed tones to the other officer, who had lots of shiny braid on his uniform, and no blood at all.

Harker lit up another cigarette as he spoke, moving so fast his hands blurred. He smoked when he was upset, Eve thought distantly, or when he was thinking.

He was upset now. A mad woman had tried to kiss him, of course he was upset!

'Of course, my lad. You come with me and we'll see what we can find.'

Harker turned to Eve and held his hand out to her. She took it, but only because she'd have looked damn stupid ignoring it. What she did try to ignore, however, was the shock that ran through her again when his fingers touched hers.

And anyway, it wasn't his fault. She'd just been overwhelmed, and a man fresh from battle, dirty and heroic, was always going to be sexy. Right?

It didn't mean anything. He'd probably barely noticed.

Harker watched Tallulah usher Eve into the women's tent the squad had set up. At least, he tried to watch Tallulah, and not Eve, with her clinging t-shirt and her big eyes and her soft, lush, trembling mouth.

Her t-shirt is clinging because it's soaked with gore and blood, and her eyes are wide because she's in shock, he reminded himself sharply, but even that didn't help, because now he had fantasies of helping the shocked, stumbling Eve remove her dirty clothes and tenderly wash away the blood.

'Sir?' Tallulah said, and Harker's eyes remained on the tent for just a fraction of a second too long to pretend he hadn't been thinking about her. 'There's some fresh water in your tent, if you want to wash.'

Wash. Eve. Warm and trembling and soft and Dammit, he'd been doing fine until she'd gone into her tent, and then he'd blinked and in that second had imagined her naked and soapy, and it had all gone to hell. 'Yeah. Sure. Thanks.'

He stumbled into his own tent, hearing Banks's voice through the thin canvas. 'What are you smiling about?'

Tallulah, laughter in her voice, replied, 'Major Harker. I think he's sweet on our captive.'

If she's not a spy, then she's mad. Either of these things ought to be enough to cancel out big blue-green eyes and clinging t-shirts.

Harker wished he could convince himself on that point.

'What, Eve?' Banks said. 'Well, I wouldn't say no.'

'You'd have to fight the Major off first.'

He threw his clothes on the floor and tested the water, which was annoyingly hot. Cold would have been more useful.

'That's enough,' said Charlie. She was cleaning her sword. 'He's not sweet on anyone.'

There was a pause. Harker nodded to himself. Damn right he wasn't. Being sweet on a suspected spy would be a ridiculous thing to do. If you feel sorry for the enemy, the enemy will kill you.

'Jealous, Lieutenant?' Daz asked, and Harker wondered when he'd found his way to their little camp. He must have spent more time comforting Eve than he'd realised.

'I know popular opinion says that I'm Major Harker's lover,' Charlie said, 'but I'm too ugly for him and he's too bitter for me. Besides, I saw him through dysentery when we were campaigning near the Scottish border and unless you're mad about someone it's hard to be attracted to them after that.'

There was an embarrassed silence. Harker frowned at the tent wall, slightly hurt. Bitter? Did she really think he was bitter?

'And I think I'm done with my stew,' Daz said. 'Did you have to bring up dysentery?'

'Sorry.'

'I think if you really loved someone then it wouldn't matter if they had dysentery or something really disgusting,' Tallulah said.

'Really?' said Daz. 'You ever seen any of the really disgusting diseases, Private?'

'Well, no, sir, but I mean ... if you already loved someone, then surely it wouldn't matter?'

Harker threw himself down on his narrow, uncomfortable bunk, while he waited for the water to cool. Great. Now the squad was discussing his love life. Even Charlie! Harker knew half the army thought he and Charlie were lovers and he'd always been both amused and depressed by the idea. Amused because they had such a lack of imagination, and depressed, because if they couldn't see that what existed between him and Charlie was loyalty, pure and simple, then maybe they were missing one of the basic tenets of the army.

You followed your commander, and you protected your brothers even if they were sisters. It was what Harker did. It was what he'd always done.

'You're quite right,' Charlie said eventually. 'Love's a fine thing, and so's loyalty, but I'd ask if you could all remember that they're different things.'

'You're very loyal to the Major,' Tallulah mumbled.

'Yes, I am, Private. That's my point.'

It was just because he was restless. That was all. After all, the last time he'd had a woman had been ... well, it had been Saskia. And that had been well before the divorce had come through. Before Southwark. Maybe before Newmarket. He couldn't remember.

That in itself was kind of sad.

Harker realised he was counting not just months, but years, and groaned. Truth was, for a long time the only woman he'd actually wanted was Saskia. The problem was that she hadn't wanted him back. Lack of ambition, she'd thrown at him, and Harker had been baffled.

'I have ambition,' he said. 'My ambition is to protect my men and win the war.'

'Very noble,' Saskia fired back, 'but you could do it better with a promotion.'

Romance had been the first casualty of their private war. Sex had been the second.

He stuck his head in the bucket of cooling water and tried to drown out those images of Eve stripping naked in the next tent.

Chapter Eleven.

When they left camp the next day, Harker offered Eve a ride in the wagon, but she chose to walk, needing to pound out feelings she didn't quite understand. She'd always found a physical distraction helped when she needed to think, either walking or playing the guitar or doing housework.

Now she was walking, marching in fact, and with her body occupied her mind could think.

She hadn't dreamed much last night, but she suspected Daz had slipped something into her drink to make her sleep. Probably just as well. She could see the sticky puddles of blood whenever she closed her eyes, see the saw marks in severed bones, the skin flapping loose, the steady pump, pump of veins emptying themselves of blood. She could see all the muscles and sinews, and when she let her guard down she could see the pink squibbly bits deep inside a person that ought never to see the light of day.

She was developing a Lady Macbeth-style obsession with washing her hands, which couldn't be good.

The rest of the squad had been kind to her, in varying degrees. Harker had avoided her somewhat, but she couldn't really blame him. The others had made an effort to talk to her, make her comfortable, as if she was an invalid.

I must have been in shock, she told herself. I thought I was acting quite normal most of the time.

When they broke for lunch she talked and smiled and felt quite proud of herself for participating, but was vaguely aware that she shouldn't have to be proud of herself for participating. She should just ... participate.

Harker hadn't chained her up, but she got the feeling he was watching her all the time. Probably wondering if she was going to try to kiss him again. Well, fat chance. She wasn't crazy any more today well, no more than she had been since she woke up in this mad world and she didn't tend to want to kiss people who weren't talking to her.

Hah!

When they set off again, Daz was driving and Harker was marching with the squad. He walked alongside Eve for a while, then said, 'You okay today?'

'Fine,' she said.

'How're your feet?'

'They're fine.' Damn sight better than some of the feet I saw yesterday. They're attached, for one thing.

'Sleep all right last night?'

'Fine.'

'Three fines. You'll notice I haven't cuffed you today?'

'Yep.' She realised he was looking for something else, and added, 'Thank you.'

Harker gave up, and went to walk with Charlie.

Eve didn't know if they'd run out of Roman roads to travel on, or if Harker was taking back routes on purpose, but they were walking along narrow, badly made tracks between small, squalid villages, trails that were deeply rutted with the tracks of cartwheels. Every now and then, someone had filled in the worst of the holes with rocks and straw, but they frequently had to stop and haul the wagon out of the mud. They were walking with heavy packs in order to lighten the wagon, but it didn't seem to be helping much.

On either side of them stretched endless fenland, the featureless marshes eventually fading off into chilly mist.

When it got dark, Harker ordered a rest, then told them they'd be walking another couple of hours. Banks groaned, Tallulah made a face, but no one complained, least of all Eve, who barely heard anyway.

The scent of the sea came rolling over the dark land as they crossed yet another marshy fen, this time in the dark. Harker himself was scouting ahead, although they were using a track raised above the fens and well-indented with cart tracks, so no one seemed particularly worried.

Isn't the Wash famously unpredictable? Eve thought. Shifting sandbanks and moveable coastline, full of shipwrecks. Maybe we'll find an unstable bit of coastline and just fall into the sea.

Would anyone miss me?

She'd probably have carried on in this nihilistic vein had not Harker called a halt for the night. Eve hadn't really noticed, but they'd finally come to the end of the fens and had been walking through an increasingly dark and rather forbidding wood. Or it might be a forest. She wasn't sure. They were in another deep ditch, a riverbed or something, sunk from sight between the trees.

Charlie handed out duties, camp was made, and food served out. Daz ordered everyone to change their socks before their feet went mouldy.

'Court-martial for anyone with trench foot,' Harker added, with that half-smile of his.

Eve took off her trainers automatically, and then realised she'd once again been given a pack of cooking supplies to carry, and didn't have any spare clothes. That morning she'd been given khakis to dress in, with the explanation that her own clothes were still in rather a state. She didn't know if her jeans, t-shirt and spare underwear had been left behind or not. She was finding it difficult to care.

'Here.' Someone was holding out something soft and woollen ... yes, a pair of socks. She started to look up to see who it was, but then registered the missing little finger, and said, 'Thank you, Major.'

'Welcome. Sorry, ain't got any spare boots for you.'

'That's okay. I'm fine.'

'Yeah, you must be, it's all you've said all day.'

She looked up to see what he meant by that, but he was gone, vanishing into the darkness outside the firelight. Eve put the clean socks on, and when she looked up he was back again, this time holding out a guitar as if it was a bunch of flowers.