An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure (Book 2): Lost In Kragdon-Ah

by Inmon, Shawn

  The man looked at her impassively. He didn’t answer, but pointed to another house that sat kitty-corner from his. A hunched old woman sat in a chair outside her front door.

  “Gunta,” Senta-eh said to her. “My friend has a wound that I am concerned about. Can you look at it?”

  The old woman grunted as she got up and walked to Alex. Senta-eh had torn the left sleeve off his shirt and the bloody bandage was evident.

  The woman looked at the fine horses and saddlebags, then at Alex’s wound and back at Senta-eh. “What can you give me?”

  Among the many gifts Versa-eh had left them was a stack of the tiles called duntas. Senta-eh removed one of them and held it out to the woman, whose eyes glittered with greed at the sight of it.

  “Bring him inside,” she said, disappearing into her hut.

  She may have been a capitalist, but she gave fair value for the money. She removed the bloody bandages Senta-eh had wrapped his arm with, cleaned the wound with a bubbling liquid, then dusted the whole arm with a greenish powder.

  “You did a good enough job with it,” the old healer said. “He won’t lose the arm.”

  Senta-eh had not known that was a possibility. She returned to her saddlebag, retrieved another of the tiles and gave it to the healer as thanks. When she did that, she revealed the stack of tiles that she tucked back into her saddlebag.

  As she sat on her horse, Lanta-eh spread her arms wide in a benediction for the village and chanted quietly.

  They did not notice that the old lady hurried across the street to her neighbor as they rode away.

  They pushed on, but only made it a few hundred yards past the last house. They were moving at their normal, plodding pace when they heard the sound of people running behind them.

  Senta-eh turned and saw that it was much of the population of the tiny settlement running toward them. They carried weapons, but they were more of the plowshares-pounded-into-swords types of weapons. One man carried large metal hooks. Another a scythe with a wooden handle. A woman carried an ax she had been using to chop wood. They did not attempt to disguise their intent. They ran toward them as fast as they could, murder in their eyes.

  Senta-eh regretted showing the tiles to the old woman. She had obviously spread the word to the other villagers and now they came for them. She pined for her bow, but had none—it had been lost in Lasta-ah. She jumped from her horse, drew her sword, and waited.

  Alex did not wait. He grabbed his twin-bladed ax and slid off his horse. He raised the ax and sprinted in the direction of the oncoming mob. He ran with such rage on his face that the villagers—who were farmers, not fighters—immediately realized their mistake. Most lost their nerve and turned back toward their town.

  Still, half a dozen people ran at Alex and he at them. He met the man with the scythe first. He swung the sharpened ax blade in a whizzing arc that removed the man’s hand. The scythe and hand both dropped to the dirt.

  Alex spun and buried the ax deep in the throat of the man attacking with the hooks. He pried his ax loose from the man’s throat and turned, ready for his next victim.

  The woman with the ax shrieked, threw it to the ground and retreated. The remaining two men also dropped their makeshift weapons, raised their hands, and backed away.

  The man Alex had sliced through the throat lay gurgling and dying on the dusty trail. Blood spurted in an arc from the stump of the man with the scythe. He gripped the stump with his left hand as though that could stop the bleeding. He fell on his knees and begged for his life.

  Alex did not hear him. He turned away, walked to his horse, and pulled himself up. Tears of anger, frustration and mourning ran down his face. He took a deep breath, looked around as if just coming awake, and said, “We’ve still got daylight for a few more hours. Let’s keep going.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The Journey Home

  The journey from Lasta-ah back to Winten-ah was not nearly as perilous as the trip had been in the other direction. They still had run-ins with animals and got caught in a horrible plague of locusts several weeks into their escape, but they were never in peril like they had been so many times the previous year.

  Alex couldn’t help but wonder if that had something to do with having the Chosen One along with them. At each stop, people flocked to her and she gave benedictions and blessings as naturally as Monda-ak slobbered. In any case, she helped smooth their road home.

  By the time Alex reassumed leadership of the group—which Senta-eh was more than happy to relinquish—they had already traveled nearly a hundred miles west. That put an end to Alex’s initial plan, which had been to double back up the Okrent-ah, catch a ride with a boat heading that way, then just do their previous journey in reverse.

  Alex could never stand to backtrack, though—witness the difficulty they faced in Matori-ah just to avoid that very thing—so they struck out due west. They headed that direction for two months, which put them in early winter once again.

  Wintering in what had once been known as Texas and New Mexico was wildly different from their previous winter holed up in the northern Rockies. They still had the hardship of going over the mountains, but it was in pleasant weather.

  It took several months for both Alex and Monda-ak’s wounds to heal. Heal they did, though, whether it was through the ministrations of the old woman in the unnamed village or riding in close proximity to a young girl many thought of as the Chosen One.

  In many ways, Lanta-eh made the entire journey different. They didn’t broadcast that her tribe and others considered her a holy person and called her the Chosen One. Alex envisioned having to fight his way through every settlement and village, as other ambitious leaders tried to chain her and use whatever mystical power she had.

  Had they seen the end of Draka-ak, they might not be so anxious to take her. She may have been a cosmically divine creation, but she did not guarantee victory in battle.

  They celebrated the winter solstice by taking a day off the trail. The weather was warm and fine, and with Lanta-eh safely in tow, there was no absolute need to hurry home. All three of them knew they would, in all likelihood, never see this part of the world again.

  For Alex, he hoped that if he ever crossed the southern Rockies again, it would be in an airplane, perhaps with Amy sitting in the seat beside him.

  Amy.

  For the previous eighteen months, Alex had done the best he could to put her out of his mind. He knew that it was possible, even likely, that he would die on the mission to rescue Lanta-eh. That being the case, there was no point in torturing himself with thoughts of her.

  But now, with the greatest dangers behind them, every step their horses took brought him one step closer to returning to her.

  Almost six years had passed since he had stepped through the door to Kragdon-ah. That meant Amy would be celebrating her tenth birthday soon. It was impossible for Alex to picture her at that age—so grown up that he might not recognize her.

  He was sure she thought he had abandoned her, and that was the most painful thought of all. He did not know what story he would concoct to explain his long absence.

  As far as that went, he wasn’t sure whose home he would be stepping back into. He hadn’t paid cash for his house. He had bought it with a Veteran’s Administration loan. Alex wasn’t sure how many payments they let you miss before they foreclosed on you, but he knew it wasn’t six years. He knew he would likely be stepping into someone else’s basement. They might even have rebuilt the wall. Alex wasn’t concerned with that—he would have his heavy stone hammer with him when he stepped through.

  And, after wrestling Grunta-ak and facing Draka-ak in fights to the death, an angry homeowner was low on Alex’s list of possible worries.

  Once they crossed the mountains, they turned north-northwest. The months continued to fly by, but eventually things began to look familiar to them and they realized that they could make it to Winten-ah on the summer solstice.

  They picked up their pace an
d camped just south of the familiar forest that lay to the west of the cliffside caves the night before solstice.

  The next morning, they picked up the well-remembered trail. It was at this point almost two years earlier, when returning from Denta-ah, that Alex had first known something was wrong. The expected guards and greetings had not been forthcoming. Instead, it had been mere children standing watch and their greetings had been subdued.

  Alex’s stomach twisted and churned as they approached the first guard stand in the trees.

  He spotted it, and the warrior in it and shouted, “Gunta, Balta-ak!”

  A cry drenched in both disbelief washed over them. “Gunta, gunta, gunta! You have returned!”

  Immediately, Balta-ak put a horn to his lips and blew three sharp retorts. The call echoed up the line, from one guard to the next, until it was repeated back to them from Winten-ah itself.

  Alex couldn’t help himself. He spurred his horse on, anxious to close the final mile of what had been an epic two-year journey.

  Winten-ah was both exactly the same and completely changed since they had left to rescue Lanta-eh.

  It was the same in the familiar rise of the cliff, the smoke coming from the cooking fires, and the grass swaying in the open field in front of the caves.

  It was different in that it was no longer a community in mourning. The loss of most of a generation of children would never be forgotten, but two years on, there were once again young ones playing in the field.

  Watching a small group of spindly boys wrestle brought Werda-ak so plainly into view in Alex’s mind that he could not hold back his tears.

  Sekun-ak, Alex’s adopted brother and now well-established chieftain of Winten-ah, was in the first group to greet him. In the Kragdon-ah way, he did not hug Alex, but laid a hand steadily on each of his shoulders.

  Ganku-eh, the former chieftain of the Winten-ah stood off to the side. She was smiling wanly, and Alex could see that she was broken. She was right to step down and let Sekun-ak take over.

  Alex looked left and right, hoping to see Dan Hadaller, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Then, coming down the cliff, a strong warrior climbed with a smaller man strapped to his back. When he reached the ground, he set his burden down. It was Dan. He used a walking stick and was substantially more bent and broken than the last time Alex had seen him. His hair was mostly gone, which was a novelty in Winten-ah, as the Winten-ah never lost their hair. He did not look well, but he was alive.

  Alex did not wait for Dan to hobble to him, but instead hurried to his side and threw a gentle arm around his shoulders.

  “I’m not as young as I used to be,” Dan said in a raspy voice. Alex didn’t like the sound of it.

  “You look fine. I’m going home soon. I’m taking you with me. I brought the Chosen One home. There’s no way they will deny me anything now.”

  Dan smiled, but it was weak. “You see how I move now, don’t you?”

  “I don’t care how slow you are. I’ll strap you on my back and carry you. I’m taking you through that door.”

  Dan didn’t argue, but just nodded weakly.

  Alex leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “I’ve got a present for you. I brought it all the way from Lasta-ah, courtesy of a pretty girl you’ve never met named Versa-eh. You would have loved her. What a spitfire.”

  And then, Alex was surrounded, by children, by adults, by everyone. They all wanted to touch the hero of the moment.

  Soon, everyone turned to Lanta-eh, thrilled beyond words that their golden child, their Chosen One, was returned to them.

  Karga-ah, the animal keeper for Winten-ah, appeared out of nowhere to lay claim to the three horses Versa-eh had gifted them. He smiled approvingly, called for his apprentices, and they led them away to their stables. “I can breed these! We will have beautiful animals for generations, thanks to you, Manta-ak!” He seemed much more excited about the animals than he was the return of Lanta-eh.

  Sekun-ak smiled broadly, threw an arm around Alex’s shoulder, and pronounced, “Tonight, we will feast!”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Across the Plains, to Home

  It was an odd feeling to return to the caves after so long away. When he left, it had felt like home. Now, having spent so long sleeping mainly under the stars, it felt odd to be in one of the communal sleeping rooms again.

  Monda-ak didn’t seem to have any trouble adjusting. Everyone treated him like a hero as well. People loved to give him little tidbits of meat and he accepted each one as if it was his royal right. The tiniest of girls made him a necklace out of local wildflowers and he wore it proudly.

  Lanta-eh and Senta-eh both had families waiting for them and they were celebrated and welcomed in a dozen different ways.

  Each morning, Alex strapped Dan Hadaller on his back and carried him up to the small room at the top of the cliff that looked out on the clearing and the forest. It was where Alex had recuperated after he’d had the sickness that almost killed him, but he had been obviously out of place there. A young man among old.

  Dan now seemed to fit in perfectly.

  Alex was anxious to make the trek to the door, and home, but he could see that Dan wasn’t up to it and he wouldn’t leave him behind. He hoped that given time and the opportunity to see his father, he would regain some strength.

  The first morning after he returned, Alex had given Dan the present he had carried all the way from Lasta-ah. It was a small, leather-bound collection of blank pages. Alex gave it to him along with two crude pencils and explained that they had devised a system of writing on the other side of the mountains.

  “I thought you might want to write down some of your memories,” Alex said. That’s what he said, but the implication was, in case you never get stronger and don’t make it out of here, I can give your story to your father if he’s still alive.

  That implication was never spoken, but Dan understood. He clutched the book to his chest, and nodded vigorously.

  For the next four days, Dan’s strength waned instead of improved, but he wrote in the book for hours every day. His tiny, messy scrawl filled every page. Late on the fourth day, he handed the small book back to Alex.

  “You’re a regular Stephen King,” Alex said. It was a reference that no one else in Kragdon-ah would have understood.

  Alex carried Dan back to the sleeping quarters, and he dropped off immediately.

  He never woke up again.

  The man the tribe knew as Vanda-ak, or he who runs, was not an official member of the Winten-ah. But, he was given the full burial ceremony, presided over by Lanta-eh herself.

  Alex thought he was cried out after losing Werda-ak, but he found that, at least for him, there might not be any such thing.

  With Dan gone, there was nothing really holding Alex to Kragdon-ah. After the burial ceremony, Alex went to Sekun-ak.

  “I fulfilled my oath. I would like to go to the beach tomorrow. I am ready to go home.”

  The serious expression on Sekun-ak’s face never changed, but he put two fingers to his forehead.

  “Senta-eh said that you would want to do that now that Vanda-ak has gone on. She also wants to lead the party that takes you there.”

  “There is no one better. I hope there will be nothing but peace and prosperity for Winten-ah for generations, but if you ever need someone to lead your army, she is who I would choose.”

  “I thought perhaps you would choose her for something else, as well.”

  The implication was clear.

  “I always knew I would return home, to my daughter. It felt wrong to be with someone here when I knew I was leaving.”

  For a moment, an idea flashed across Alex’s mind—taking Senta-eh home with him.

  How would the twenty-first century react to a seven-foot-tall woman warrior in their midst? Much more important, though, was how would Senta-eh react to a world where stama ruled? A world with automobiles, rifles, and television.

  Alex knew the answer, a
nd let the image go. It was impossible. Whatever he felt for Senta-eh, could never be. He loved her world, violent and dangerous as it was, but had to leave it. She could never live in his.

  “You are a good man, Manta-ak. I am proud to be your brother.”

  Alex put his hand on Sekun-ak’s shoulder, then went to find Senta-eh and prepare for the journey home.

  He found Senta-eh at the lowest ledge of the cliff, looking out at the open field, watching the children play.

  Alex sat beside her. “Sekun-ak said you volunteered to take me to the door tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” she said in her even-handed way. “Who else would put up with you for another day?”

  Alex smiled and did something he had wanted to do for years. Nothing too much. Nothing that could never be undone. He reached out and held her hand.

  He had no idea how she would react, but she gripped his hand fiercely. When she turned her face to him, he saw a deep well of pain in her eyes. She squeezed one more time, then stood gracefully and said, “I assume you will want to leave before first light?”

  “You know me well.”

  “That I do,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed the ladder to the next level.

  ALEX PACKED HIS BAG carefully. Not so much for the trip across the plain, but knowing that he had to carry everything he wanted to take home with him. He had surprisingly few souvenirs.

  He wore the rough half-coin that Tokin-ak had given him on a leather thong around his neck. He had tucked Dan Hadaller’s diary inside a bag and then slipped that inside another just in case he got wet. He carried both his heavy hammer and two-bladed ax with him and had a knife tucked into a sheath on his belt.

  There was almost nothing else he wanted or needed to take with him.

  When he walked to the bottom of the cliff, he didn’t know what to expect. He, Monda-ak and just two others had made a round trip of thousands of miles, so how many people should it take to escort him perhaps fifteen miles to the coast?