Crouched, we move at a half run between the bushes and trees down to the rear gardens. Isolated shots sound from inside the castle. We go first to the man fallen by the side of the steaming, hissing four wheel drive. A man lies dead in the passenger seat, his uniform weltered in blood, his jaw half torn off. The driver lying on the ground is still moaning; blood seeps on to the gravel beneath him. He is a tall, gawky young man with the spotted complexion of adolescence. Our lieutenant squats to slap his face, trying to get some sense from him but extracting only whimpers. Finally she rises, shakes her head, exasperated.

She looks from the wounded man to the soldier with the machinegun, the one called Karma. He has taken off his steel helmet to wipe his brow; he is red haired. “Your turn,” she mutters. “Come on,” she says to me, as Karma puts his helmet back on, clicks something on the machine gun and points the weapon at the head of the man lying on the ground. The lieutenant strides off, her boots crunching over the gravel.

I turn quickly and follow her and the soldier with the rocket launcher, a strange tenseness between my shoulder blades, as

though vicariously preparing for the coup de grace. The single, loud bang still makes me jump.

We staid, you and I, in the centre of the castle's courtyard, by the well. We look up and around. The looters have done little damage. The lieutenant quizzed old Arthur who chose to stay with the castle rather than come with us and discovered the men arrived only an hour earlier; they barely had time to start sacking our home before our brave lieutenant arrived to the rescue. Now it is hers.

Her men are scrambling everywhere, like children with a new toy. They have a lookout on the battlements, another sentry at the gatehouse; they have mastered the castle's main gate and the portcullis a recent wrought iron replacement, perhaps more decorative than effective, but it seems to please them all the same and are now investigating the cellars, stores and rooms; our servants surprised, confused have been told to let them do as they wish; all the doors have been unlocked.