“Embarrassing,” agreed one of the soldiers they hadn’t been introduced to yet.
“Our brother is DEAD! Of course we’re being dramatic! Wouldn’t you be?”
Captain Bravey and Sergeant Crashey looked at each other, then down at the corpse of Leftenant Gravey, then back to the girls.
“Nope,” shrugged Crashey.
“Stiff upper and all that,” Bravey said kindly. “Why trouble yourself over such a little thing?”
“It’s not little, it’s not,” wept Anne. “It’s Bran.”
The gunfire went quiet at last with a rattle of armor and hammers falling on empty chambers. The girls tore away from the squad and stumbled out onto the road toward their brother. Charlotte and Emily got their hands up under him, slick with blood.
“I’m sorry, Bran,” Charlotte said to his dear, sweet face. “I shouldn’t have called you a donkey. I should have let you have the sword.”
“A little help, Anne?” Emily groaned. But Anne did not answer, and when they got Branwell under the shelter of the stained glass walls, when they’d laid him out beside Leftenant Gravey and looked for her, the youngest of them was nowhere to be seen.
“FORM RANKS!” Napoleon and Wellington hollered again. “HANDLE CARTRIDGE!”
“Anne! Anne! Where’s she gone?” Charlotte spun round, panicked. Her heart threatened to give the whole thing up and run off without her.
“PRIME AND LOAD!” came the cry from the English and the French.
Lime juice sprayed from a thousand rifle barrels. It stung their eyes, their skin, their teeth like acid. Emily rubbed at her eyes, her fingers covered in blood and the sour, vicious lime. She spied her sister first. Anne was creeping across the plaza toward one of the smaller bullfrogs. It had a catapult on its green back and a sleepy, friendly look in its eye—but then, all frogs have that look, and it doesn’t mean they are sleepy or friendly.
“Pssst,” Anne coaxed the frog, holding out her hand to it like it was a shy pony. “Nice frog. Brave frog. Handsome frog. Who’s a nice, brave, handsome frog?”
The frog noticed Anne. It stared at her hand in disbelief.
“Er,” the frog said uncertainly. “I suppose that I am, mademoiselle?”
“Anne!” hissed Emily. “Get back here this instant! What are you doing?” Two, two, the grown-up voice in her protested. There can’t be only two. We’ll never make it on just two of us.
“MAKE READY!” yelled the Duke and the Emperor.
“I’m going after her,” Charlotte said firmly. “Hold my rifle, Em. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Hell on a plate, you ruddy fools!” screamed Rogue. “What did I clearly say about hearing anybody belch out make ready? Get inside, you unfathomably stupid breathers!”
Charlotte and Emily looked round the ruined red plaza. Not a single building still held roof and window together. Under the onslaught of Old Boney, everything that was once inside was now firmly outside, and mostly lying on the street in pieces.
“WHERE?” They shouted together as the armies bellowed commands they now knew too well, handle cartridge and draw ramrods and ram down! “HOW?”
“Yes you are a nice, brave, handsome frog!” Anne exclaimed warmly. She smiled the same smile she used on Rainbow and Diamond and Jasper back home, whenever a thunderstorm had made them nervous of eating from her hand.
The frog’s whole body seemed to relax. He crouched down near her. “Thank you! You know, it feels so good to hear someone say all that. I always thought I was rather good-looking, and I do try to be kind to others whenever I can, and I have never shirked my duty to roi ou pays, king or country, don’t you know, but no one ever seems to notice. I’m just one frog in a million, no matter what I do!”
“Oh, not to me!” Anne said winningly. “To me you are simply One Frog. One Perfect Frog!”
“Is that a bit of bacon you’ve got there?” Napoleon’s foot soldier said hungrily. “We don’t get meat rations anymore.”
“Fresh from my breakfast,” Anne nodded, for there never was a breakfast she didn’t half-smuggle away for her animals. “All for you.”
Sergeant Major Rogue rolled his good eye and made a disgusted sound. “Stupid tourists,” he sighed. “You could be sitting on a mountain of books and still ask where’s the library? Well, it’s not my entire job to point the way to you splitwits, as I am neither a signpost nor a traffic police, but as you are about to get your adorable little meat sacks roasted and fried, I suppose I’ve got to go ahead and do every-bleeding-thing for you!”
The wooden soldier reached them in two short, businesslike steps. He snatched Charlotte’s sword from Bran’s cold, stiffening fingers and Emily’s mace right out of her hand. He tossed them up onto the glittering scarlet pavement between a haberdashery and a redgrocer, whose beets and radishes and raspberries and rhubarb and grapes had already been half devoured by hungry warriors on both sides. Once away from their owners, the weapons shuddered and trembled and became suitcases again. Rogue yanked a little balsam-bound notebook from one breast pocket, a twiggy pencil from the other, and scribbled something down. He shoved the paper at Charlotte.
“Go say this to your luggage and say it NICELY, mind you. You’ve only got about ninety seconds before nothing you say will matter and we’ll all be having tea together in Hades. Go on!”