Sergeant Grimm was screaming something in English. Probably a curse, Marius thought as he dived under the cover of a fallen log. There was a soft bang. Then just the steady thudding of the tank engine as the machine stood in the rain. Then shouts of panic from the men inside as a yellow gas cloud wrapped around the machine.

There were whirring gears and hot exhaust pipes with no guards on. The half-blind men had to leave the steel mantrap slowly and carefully or risk losing a hand in the gears or skin on the scalding pipes.

The two hatches flew open. Five men, weeping and coughing, fell on to the ground. They splashed their hands in the long wet grass to rub water into their swollen and red-lidded eyes. Some simply buried their faces in the grass and lay there coughing. Only Silver Hand rose to his feet and turned his sightless eyes to the sky. He shouted in German, ‘You will die slowly for this, boy. But first you will watch your little friend die even more slowly.’

‘Gott mit uns,’ Marius called back before he turned and ran from the tentacles of gas that were slithering over the ground to choke him.

Madame Clare looked shocked. She stood by her cart and watched Marius and Aimee walk down the hill towards her, leading Daisy.

Marius began to fasten the donkey into her harness while Aimee gave the woman her sweetest smile. ‘You must be surprised to see us,’ she said.

‘I thought you had stolen the animal and run off,’ the woman said in a choking voice.

‘No, you thought we’d been captured by the British army. You were waiting for your reward. You tried to sell us, Madame Clare.’

The woman’s face suddenly turned sly and soft. ‘I thought I was returning you to your dear father who is missing you so much and...’

‘... and the thousand francs was not important? Don’t lie, Madame.’ Aimee stood nose to nose with the woman and spoke quietly. ‘Marius here is a crack German fighter. He used Daisy here to lure the British into the wood on the hill and he killed them one by one. Now he is going to kill the woman who betrayed us.’

‘No,’ the woman moaned. ‘I have money. I will pay you.’

Aimee gave a sad, understanding smile. ‘Marius took some grenades from the British dead. Marius, show Madame Clare the grenades.’

The boy opened his pack and showed her the two gas grenades.