Officer from Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, for instance, protecting Napoleon with endless instruments (8)
I believe the answer is:
ocarinas
'officer from sergei prokofiev's war and peace for instance protecting' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'napoleon with endless instruments' is the wordplay.
'napoleon' becomes 'carinas' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'endless' means to look at the middle letters.
'instruments' becomes 'boots' (boot is a kind of instrument).
The centre of 'boots' is 'o'.
'carinas' after 'o' is 'OCARINAS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ocarinas that I've seen before include "Can I soar above the musical toys" , "Ancient egg-shaped wind instruments" , "No air sac, strangely, on the wind instruments" , "Small wind instruments with egg-shaped bodies" , "musical instruments" .)