AN: this chapter will be uploaded in two parts for length consideration

SIEBENUNDZWANZIG

Krieg (I)

Was heut gehet müde unter,

Hebt sich morgen neu geboren.

Manches geht in Nacht verloren -

Hüte dich, sei wach und munter!

What today goes wearily down

Will lift itself tomorrow newly born.

Much goes astray at night -

Beware, be alert and wide awake!

1800 hrs

Hermann looked at his watch. Three hours longer, he thought. He hadn't given up his lookout post; it had been continuously manned all day, if not by himself, then by Markos, and if not by him, then by a sharp-eyed pride member. They were all waiting, waiting for the night which would decide not only the fate of Simba's pride, but that of the Outlanders and Kopa's two human rescuers from abroad. Hermann hadn't dared mention a word of what had happened, or what was about to take place, to anyone in Germany. He would have been able to find a telephone by driving half an hour or so into one of the villages, a fact which Simba had made him well aware of ever since his return, but to call home would have been almost treasonous. Yeah, we're here in Kenya waiting to be eaten alive by lions, he pictured himself saying to the office secretary. Then it would only be a matter of time before the cars arrived to take him back to the airport, leaving the pride left to fend for themselves when their need was greatest.

"I'm back," Markos said as he walked up to relieve Hermann of his duties. "I'll spell you for a while. Look at that sunset…a completely red sky. What is it they say in English about a red sunset?"

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight," Hermann replied, first in English, then in German. "If only we were sailing, then it might bring us some good luck."

"Believe me, Sterlitz, you don't want to go sailing in this part of the world, unless it's been your lifetime ambition to get caught up in a third-world remake of Pirates. Are you going to get down from there, or what?" Hermann slowly climbed off the small boulder serving as his lookout spot as Markos stepped up.

"What's that clinking around?" Hermann asked. "What the heck are you wearing? Chain mail?"

"I wish," Markos replied. "It's our shells; I stuffed them in my pockets. Figured they'd be safer there than lying around the cave, just in case that nature special was right about crocodiles eating anything and everything."

"And you were going to tell me this when, exactly?"

"Eventually. Here, take these…one for you, nineteen for me." He dropped one round in Hermann's outstretched hand and waited a few seconds before giving him nine more. "And there's one other thing I've got which ought to interest you." Markos reached into his other pocket and took out two small shampoo bottles, the kind one might find in a cheap hotel or in a giveaway bag. He tossed one to Hermann, and kept the other.

"You're carrying toiletries around?" Hermann said, not knowing what to make of it. "How exactly is that going to help us?"

"Take the bottle cap off." Hermann shrugged, unscrewed the top, and took a sniff. The liquid inside clearly wasn't shampoo. "You actually put hooch in here? So that's why you went through so much shampoo when we were in the hotel in Berlin…to smuggle the 100-Euro vodka out of the mini fridge!"

"Brilliant, Holmes."

"Why didn't you tell me we had this before?"

"I figured you'd need it more now than you did then. Go ahead and take a swig; nobody's watching."

"You certainly don't have to ask me twice. Prost!" Hermann tipped his head back and put the bottle to his lips. He had the contents halfway down when a loud voice caused him to immediately drop the plastic vial and spit out what was left in his mouth.

"Dad! Hermann and Markos are drinking again!"

"Kopa!" Hermann exclaimed as he tried to kick the shampoo bottle behind him and out of sight. "I didn't…see you there. Aren't you and Vitani supposed to be inside?"

"Zira isn't supposed to show up until sundown," Kopa replied. "But we wanted to ask you, can we be outside with you guys when it all happens, instead of hiding inside by ourselves?"

"Absolutely not, out of the question," Hermann replied as soon as Kopa had finished speaking. "It's far too great a risk for you two to be out there with us." Kopa frowned gloomily and looked down at his feet. "Look, Kopa, I'm not trying to be nasty with you," Hermann said in a different tone, "but this isn't going to be anything you're used to. Things go wrong, plans change…and if Zira gets to you, or to Vitani for that matter, she's not going to take any chances. My job is to protect you and your family, and the best way for me to do that is to have you and your friend out of sight where it's safe."

"But I promise we won't get in the way! We could stay up above with you, where nobody can get to us. And don't you think the cave is the first place they'll come looking for us? I mean, isn't that why they're coming here in the first place? To kill me?" Kopa's words were painfully frank, and Hermann realized that he more than had a point: there was no way out of the cave except for the one entrance, and if that was blocked off, anyone cornered inside would be as good as dead. It would be guarded, of course, by the firing line and the rest of the pride, but even one enemy slipping through would surely spell disaster.

"You will follow every word I say down to the last letter," Hermann said after a somewhat lengthy pause. Kopa beamed, knowing his request was about to be granted. "If I tell you to go back inside, you go back inside. If I tell you to stay put when you want to run, you don't move an inch; if I tell you to run, you run, even if it doesn't look dangerous. To the best of your ability, if you must speak, you will speak in German so that both Markos and I can understand you…I've heard you, and you're more than capable. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yep," Kopa replied, "I got it. And don't worry about telling Vitani what you just told me; she's been behind you the whole time."

Hermann turned around and saw that sure enough, Vitani was standing directly behind him. "How do you do that?" he asked her. "I didn't even hear you walk up. And where's Adila?"

"I didn't survive in the Outlands by being noticeable," she answered. "And Adila's with the other lionesses and Simba, going over your plan for the twentieth time. Hey, what's that?"

"That?" Hermann saw that Vitani was looking at the discarded shampoo bottle, which had tipped over and spilled a bit of the vodka inside. "That's…water."

"Oh good, I'm thirsty."

"Wait, don't drink that…ooooh dear…"

Hermann watched as Vitani licked up a bit of what had spilled out, and her face progressed from normal to confused to utterly nauseated. "Pfeh! I'm poisoned!" she yelled as she started licking every available surface to get the taste out of her mouth. "What kind of water is that?"

"Uh, it went bad, that's why I threw it out," Hermann replied. "Bug Markos for some water if you're thirsty; he'll be on lookout duty for a while. I've got to go think things over for a bit…again."

Hermann quickly walked off to avoid any further rebuke from Vitani, and began to review the most recent developments, the latest in an interminable series of revisions. Kopa and Vitani would bunker in with himself and Markos, leaving the cave entirely empty, completely devoid of anyone or anything. This important bit of knowledge, however, would not be available to anyone else but the defending team, meaning that the Outsiders would still expect the cubs to be holed up inside, and would thus be tempted to go inside themselves. Why not exploit this temptation, Hermann reasoned, and use it to his advantage? In the span of less than a minute, what had begun as an exercise in worst-case scenario avoidance rapidly evolved into a rather ingeniously conceived trap: the cave wouldn't have to be empty after all. Someone else entirely— someone the Outlanders would never expect to see in a hundred years—could easily lie in wait and take the cubs' place. Someone who would be in absolutely no danger from even the most ferocious lion…someone more than capable of biting back.

1900 hrs

"What does your watch say, Markos?" Hermann was back from his errand.

"Nineteen-zero-one," Markos replied. "By our estimates, Zira and her crew show up at twenty-one-zero-zero. Sundown. I just wish I could get this stupid thing off of military mode."

"Is it that difficult for you to subtract twelve? Twenty-one hundred hours, that's nine o'clock at night. Wait a second, where do you think you're off to?"

"You're here to take over for me, aren't you? I'm going for a break."

"Not yet you're not. First, hand me that rifle you've got."

"Another weapons check?" Markos threw up his hands after handing his rifle off. "For God's sake, Hermann, you've done this five times already! The bolt isn't sticking, the gun goes 'click' when you pull the trigger…it's working fine!"

"I'm sure works fine," Hermann said. "And I bet it would work even better if it were actually loaded."

"What are you talking about? Of course that gun's loaded."

"With what…invisible bullets?" Hermann pulled the bolt back. "Look, there's nothing inside here! When you heard the 'click' when you tested the trigger, which I assume was the last time you actually handled this thing, that should have told you the gun was empty! Right now, all you've got is a metal pipe attached to a stick. And how's our bunker coming along? Is it ready?"

"That's supposed to be a bunker? It's quite clearly a stack of rocks on top of another stack of rocks; you could knock it over just by breathing on it wrong. But since you're asking, we've already made the necessary modifications to it. Kopa's up there checking it over one last time."

"You sent Kopa to inspect it? What if he falls? What if he re-injures himself? Just because he's better now doesn't mean he should be…"

"And what if I get squashed by a falling piano? Calm down, Sterlitz; of all the things to be worried about right now, what you just told me doesn't begin to make the list. When did you want to have the meeting with everyone else?"

Hermann shot a glance upward, just in case there really was a plummeting Steinway with his name on it. "In half an hour," he said. "After that, this place goes on full alert: both of us take the watch together, the pride sets up on either side of us, and we plant our little surprise in the cave. Get Kopa down from there and meet me inside with everyone else in thirty minutes."

"Yes, mein Führer."

"WHAT?"

"Nothing. Hermann."

2045

Hermann's meeting with the pride had been, in essence, an experiment in controlled chaos. Everyone seemed to have question upon question, and eventually, the master planner had to confess that he simply didn't have an answer to each and every conceivable scenario. Nevertheless, quiet confidence and unquiet gratitude seemed to be the order of the evening: after going over the most important details one final time, including Hermann's new plans to spring a trap from inside the cave, the pride erupted in hurrahs and bravos. But no one was cheering now. Pride Rock was almost totally silent and dark, the only sound and light coming from the wind and the moon. Together, all eyes watched and waited, looking for something, anything, that might tip them off to Zira's arrival.

"See anything yet?" Kopa whispered from where he was sitting behind Hermann.

"Nein. Sei geduldig…be patient."

"You think they're really going to come tonight?" Vitani's ears pricked up at Kopa'S question; she knew as well as everyone else did that the conditions of Hermann's amnesty offer to the Outlanders were specific down to the minute. If the rest of her family didn't arrive when they were supposed to, she would most likely have no option but to cover her eyes while the bullets flew, all of them intentional hits.

"I hope, for all of our sakes, that they come as promised," Hermann replied, looking up first at the moon to gauge how much light he had, and then behind him where, sure enough, Markos's flag-lantern combination was working perfectly. Earlier that day, nobody had been successful (as was fully expected) in persuading Simba to temporarily change the name of his pride's home from Pride Rock to something else of slightly more militaristic inclination—Markos kept pushing for "Fort Rudelfelsen," while Hermann fought equally hard for "Fort Friedrich," but in the end, the original moniker stuck. After all, each and every defender knew that names would be rather superfluous in the end. Inspiration would truly come not from a name, but from within—from the memory of a dear friend and a wounded country, or a son nearly lost and then saved, or a pride to defend and protect from harm.

"I'm sure they'll be here, Vitani," Kopa said quietly. "Just remember what Hermann said...be prepared for anything. Seid bereit."

"Well, no matter what happens tonight, I'm glad I've got you here with me," Vitani admitted as she inched a bit closer to her friend. "That first night when I found out you hadn't died, that you were going to be OK..." Her voice faded out. She gave Kopa a quick lick on the cheek and grimaced in embarrassment almost immediately thereafter, but Kopa just looked at her and smiled.

"I'm glad you're here too," he replied.

"And me," Hermann chimed in. "Lord knows it wouldn't be nearly as interesting around here without both—

"Ven ze moon heets your eye like a big pizza pie, zat's amooo-ree!"

"You know," Hermann said in German to a grinning Markos, "any normal person would have had you killed and turned into dog food long ago."

"So what's keeping you then?" Markos asked, still smiling.

"One, you're my friend, and two, it would be horribly cruel to the dog."

"I'm taking a wild guess here, but was that another Hermann-to-Markos death threat?" Vitani said to Kopa.

"You know it was."

2055

"Hermann, look." Markos pointed out towards a spot a few hundred yards away. "Something's moving out there."

"Damn, you've got good eyesight," Hermann said as he followed Markos's finger to a spot a few hundred yards out. "I never would have seen that. Is it them?"

"I can't tell; it just looks like a bunch of blobs from here." Then a distant roar went up in the direction of the shapes. "I think that pretty much confirms it," Markos said. "How are we supposed to tell ours from theirs, again?"

"I told them to come up with something discreet, some kind of mark we can see and use to tell them apart. There's ten of them on our side in total; if all else fails, we'll take ten shots, see who falls over, and go from there." Hermann closed his rifle's bolt and took the safety off. "Plug your ears and cover your eyes. I'm firing off the signal round."

"Cover my eyes? Why?"

"So the flash doesn't make you see stars for the rest of the night." Kopa and Vitani covered up as well, knowing the sound would be even louder as it bounced off the rock face behind them. From where she and the rest of her pride were approaching, Zira saw a bright light in the near distance, followed by a loud crack and the sound of something indiscernible whistling by overheard. It was a pre-arranged signal for the rest of the pride to get into position, but much like the German flag flying above Pride Rock, the significance was entirely lost on Zira, exactly as Hermann hoped it would be. For ten of her lionesses, however, each of whom was covered in mud on one side in an attempt to stand out from the rest, there were no doubts as to what had just happened, no questions about what had just flown over or who had sent it. As if with one mind, they hoped and prayed that they would come no closer to one of these dreaded flying objects than they had just been at that moment.

2100

"They're right on top of us, Hermann! Why can't we shoot yet?"

"We have to wait until they make the first move. Kopa, Vitani," Hermann said, switching into English, "you two keep your heads down and out of sight. The last thing I need is Zira's entire pride charging this place."

The two men watched as fourteen lionesses slowly and deliberately ascended the boulders, eyes and claws gleaming in the moonlight. In the center of the approaching line stood one lioness with a torn ear, exactly as Hermann remembered her from the first night, the time when he had been remarkably close to running her over with the Mercedes. Markos's cry of "Stop!" had saved her then, but now, not even a Cease and Desist order from the German Bundestag would stop either man from doing what they had promised to do.

Hermann picked his head up off of his rifle stock, realizing he wouldn't be shooting just yet. "They're not moving," he whispered, knowing that he would only stay invisible as long as the others couldn't hear him. "We can't fire into a staring contest; it'll give too much away."

"Simba! Save us the trouble and turn them over!" a new, unfamiliar voice boomed from below. Neither Hermann nor Markos had ever heard Zira speak. "If not, you may as well give yourselves up now!" Simba, along with the rest of his pride, could hear every one of Zira's words, but he didn't even think about responding: everything hinged on the other party's making the first move, even if it meant waiting the night out.

Up above, Markos was getting impatient and anxious. "We've got to set this off ourselves!" he said. You have to do something…get their attention! Put those voice lessons to good use!"

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Hermann mumbled as he climbed up onto the highest, closest rock he could find, or rather, the highest one he could actually climb with his one good leg. "This is absolutely nuts…you realize that, right?"

"And the rest of what we're doing isn't nuts?" his friend retorted. "Just do it! Now! I'll light you up with the flashlight!"

Hermann raised himself up to his full height, pulled his shoulders back, and sucked in a deep breath. "Ladies and gentlemen, Schumann's In der Fremde from the Eichendorff Lieder, Opus 29, Number 1!" he shouted more than loudly enough for everyone else to hear. Markos took this as his cue to shine his flashlight on him.

"Aus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rot

Da kommen die Wolken her,"

Zira stopped cold in her tracks. "What the heck is this?" she said. "Who's the singing idiot?"

"Aber Vater und Mutter sind lange tot,

Es kennt mich dort keiner mehr."

"Honestly, I'm rather disappointed in you, Simba," Zira sneered. "This is really the best you can come up with? Someone to sing to us?"

"Keep going!" Markos shouted. "And put some feeling into it…they've got to come to us!"

"Wie bald, wie bald kommt die stille Zeit,

Da ruhe ich auch, und über mir

Rauschet die schöne Waldeinsamkeit

Und keiner mehr kennt mich auch hier.

Silence.

"Thank you, thanks very much, I'm here all week long!"

"I don't believe this…you three, take care of whoever that was up there strangling the cat. He's really annoying me."

Strangling a cat? Hermann thought. That does it, she's going down. "Markos, now…here's our chance! Lights forward!"

Two beams of light fell on a group of three lionesses, each of whom had their left side, and only their left side, covered in dark mud. Hermann had no choice but to assume that the mud was the discreet signal he had insisted on back in the Outlands, and that these lionesses were thus on his side, at least until he had conclusive evidence to the contrary. "On my mark, shoot to miss!" Hermann said in German. "Into the ground in front of them!" From where they were hunkered behind Markos, Kopa and Vitani covered their ears and eyes. The command they were all expecting came only fractions of a second later.

"FIRE!"

Hermann held his shot to see what the first would accomplish. Just as he had prescribed, the bullet went into the ground, kicking up a flurry of dust and grit. The leftmost lioness took a staggering step forward and fell over, not unconvincingly, with a groan and a roar.

"We're in business!" Markos shouted, right before he took another shot, followed immediately thereafter by one from Hermann. When the dust from the impacts cleared, all three lionesses were lying motionless on the ground. They had all taken spectacular and true-to-form falls, but Hermann knew they were completely uninjured: he had seen the dust cloud from the second bullet crashing into the ground well in front of the advancing "attacker", and he had sent his own shot yards high and to the right. For a second or two, he remembered the unfortunate results of Markos's errant shots during his crash course in shooting, and hoped sincerely that his skyward bullet hadn't found its way into yet another vulture. Simba and the two ranks of lionesses on Hermann's left and right, for their part, had made no effort at all to intercept the incoming group of three, nor were they supposed to have done so in the first place: simply standing and waiting in a defensive position, Hermann had reasoned, would be enough to convince Zira that nothing fishy was taking place. His orders to the pride had been frank and direct: let be until told otherwise.

Only a few seconds after the echoes died away, two more Outlander lionesses took off in the same direction as their supposedly-fallen comrades. With extended claws and bared teeth, they too charged the lines backed by the two men, despite their pride leader's shouts to come back at once.

"What's it looking like out there?" Vitani asked Kopa, afraid to look for herself and chance having her worst fears—that three of her relatives might have just been taken out—confirmed.

"I think they're OK," Kopa said, peeking out just far enough over the ledge to see. "Hermann, alles leben?"

"Alles leben!" Hermann replied.

"They're alive," Kopa said to Vitani. "So far, they—

He was cut off by another gunshot, and then yet another following right on the heels of the first. "Ow! he exclaimed, clapping his paws over his ears and squinting his eyes shut. "My head!"

"Hey, Markos, warn us next time you do that, will you?" Vitani concurred, herself not in any better shape than Kopa was. Now there were only nine of Zira's original fourteen left standing, eight of them standing in a horseshoe around her.

"That's actually rather intelligent," Hermann admitted. "It's a body shield; a horseshoe formation to keep us from getting to Zira. Ingenious."

"I don't care what you call it;" said Markos, "it's bad news for us! What do we do now? There's five of ours still standing, and if two fall over with one shot, we'll be blown! It's harder to fake this kind of thing when they're not actually running at you…"

"Maybe, but I've got an idea. When I tell you to, take another shot and send it high." Markos nodded an agreement.

"What's he up to now?" Kopa asked.

"Saving your friend's family," Hermann cut in before anyone else could respond. "Time to make five into four. Markos," he said in English, with as little of an accent as he was able, "take out the one the furthest to our left! Again, that's the one at the end of the line on our left!" Markos didn't understand the English, but he knew exactly what his friend was doing: preventing the all-telling two-for-one by explicitly directing who got "shot" next. "Fire!"

Sure enough, as soon as the report rang out, the lioness at the left end of the horseshoe fell over with a thud. But the resulting joy and satisfaction were rather short lived, as Zira quickly came to realize that any kind of protective formation did her no good as long as lionesses kept getting picked off one by one, and that one other option, a full-blown assault, was still very much in the cards for her. "All of you," she snarled, "attack! Kill them all, and bring me Vitani and Kopa, dead or alive! Now!"

These were the exact words Hermann had been dreading, but as he expected them from the outset, he already had a plan in place. "Simba," he shouted down, "both lines, engage! And keep them out of the cave!"

So that's where they've hidden the little rat, Zira thought as she tried to push her way towards the entrance. They've given themselves up now. And yet, as frenzied as Hermann's command had been, Zira saw that she was met with little resistance; when she arrived at the entryway, nobody was even guarding it. With a malicious grin, she and her three loyalists went inside, ignoring the fact that the sounds of gunfire and combat had immediately ceased from outside.

Six of the Outlanders were still feigning death, while the four that had yet to be targeted were all standing and watching intently, their eyes trying in vain to bore into the darkness of the cave. "I can't believe it…she went in!" Kopa said, giddy with excitement. "This is going to be awesome!"

"What's so awesome about it?" Vitani responded, not having been filled in on this particular part of Hermann's grand scheme. "There's nothing in there; she'll figure that out soon enough, and then we're right back where we started!"

"Actually," Hermann interrupted, there's definitely something in there; not you or Kopa, obviously, but something, regardless. And I do have to agree with your friend on this one…this is going to be awesome."

"So what's in there, then?" "Our secret weapon. And he doesn't take kindly to being disturbed or to cub killers…or the Barcelona Football Club, but that's beside the point."

2115

Zira and her trio of minions stared ahead into the dark, all of them believing that only feet away lay the object of their most cruel and bloodthirsty desire. Sure enough, just as expected, a pair of yellow eyes was staring directly back at them, but unexpectedly, the eyes didn't look like they belonged to Kopa or Vitani, and the expression of horror Zira thought would surely be showing through was completely absent. In fact, these particular eyes did not seem to be lion's eyes at all: the pupils were narrow and slit-like instead of round, and the lids didn't seem to be blinking.

Zira's intuitions weren't leading her astray. Indeed, she was not looking at a lion at all, but rather at an animal of a very different kind, one who had been waiting for this exact moment, with explicit instructions from the higher-ups to "have a bit of fun." As her sight adjusted second by second to the near-total darkness, Zira began to make out distinguishable features: four stubby legs and a long, tapered tail which, like the eyes, couldn't possibly be attached to a lion's body. Then the unfamiliar creature took a step forward into the same sliver of moonlight that had once fallen about the nearly-dead Kopa on the night of Hermann and Markos's arrival. As the light came down, it revealed the final, all-telling indicator: a gleaming row of bright white, needle-sharp teeth lining a titanic set of jaws.

"Well hello," a snakelike voice intoned, its owner completely concealed in the dark except for one eye and a set of teeth. "I have been…expecting you." The eyes darted over to Zira

"Zira, is that what I think it is?" one of the other lionesses said with obvious angst. "It looks like a...

"Shut up!" Zira snapped back. "It's probably just—

She was cut off abruptly by a loud, rattling hiss, at once putting an end to all speculation that someone was playing a joke or putting her on. "Oh no, señora, I assure you I am exactly what she thinks I am. In fact, you and I, we have already met once before."

"Met before? Who are you?" Zira said, already knowing full well what was speaking to her and sensing fear in herself for the first time in years. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? Is quite simple: you try to kill one of Simba's family, you try to kill…no, that's not right, I try again: you try to kill me, you have to… ay, madre de Dios, I never get used to this English! One more time, this time I get it. You—

"Simba?" Zira interrupted. "You know about him?" "I know about him, and I know about you. Remember your little 'accident' at the pond, when you got that torn ear?"

It can't be, it's not possible, she thought, only to have her suspicions immediately confirmed:

"I'm the one who gave it to you." Zira watched in near horror as the toothy grin in front of her got wider and more sinister by the second. "And I think," the voice concluded, rising in tone and volume with each word, "that it's time for you to get a left ear to match your right!"