Mists of Kragdon-ah: An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure Read online

  The Alex Hawk Time Travel Series

  A Door into Time

  Lost in Kragdon-ah

  Return from Kragdon-ah

  Warrior of Kragdon-ah

  Prince of Kragdon-ah

  Mists of Kragdon-ah

  Tribes of Kragdon-ah

  Mists of Kragdon-ah

  Copyright 2021 by Shawn Inmon

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Mists of Kragdon-ah

  Note From the Author

  Chapter One | Into the Mist

  Chapter Two | Lost

  Chapter Three | Marten

  Chapter Four | A Disagreement

  Chapter Five | Hawthorne

  Chapter Six | Beldin

  Chapter Seven | Outnumbered

  Chapter Eight | When a Battle is Not a Battle

  Chapter Nine | Beldin Redux

  Chapter Ten | The Edge

  Chapter Eleven | Monsters

  Chapter Twelve | When the Edge is Not the End

  Chapter Thirteen | Yankees Go Home

  Chapter Fourteen | The Story of David Longabaugh

  Chapter Fifteen | Tia Longabaugh

  Chapter Sixteen | A Decision

  Chapter Seventeen | Preparation

  Chapter Eighteen | Open Water

  Chapter Nineteen | Maka

  Chapter Twenty | A Body Floating

  Chapter Twenty-One | Another Try

  Chapter Twenty-Two | A New Plan Needed

  Chapter Twenty-Three | Captured

  Chapter Twenty-Four | Therese, Queen of the Thobis

  Chapter Twenty-Five | A Farewell

  Chapter Twenty-Six | Andio

  Chapter Twenty-Seven | Andio Redux

  Chapter Twenty-Eight | A Big Change

  Chapter Twenty-Nine | Back to School

  Chapter Thirty | Back to School, Redux

  Chapter Thirty-One | Harkin

  Chapter Thirty-Two | To Strike a Bargain

  Chapter Thirty-Three | On the Run

  Chapter Thirty-Four | Jungle Love

  Chapter Thirty-Five | Waiting

  Chapter Thirty-Six | Open Water

  Chapter Thirty-Seven | Attacked from Above

  Chapter Thirty-Eight | A Trojan Ship

  Chapter Thirty-Nine | Jantanak

  Chapter Forty | Gains and Losses

  Chapter Forty-One | The Last Wall

  Chapter Forty-Two | Revelations

  Chapter Forty-Three | The Battle of Jantanak

  Chapter Forty-Four | An Unexpected Arrival

  Chapter Forty-Five | A Longabaugh Reunion

  Chapter Forty-Six | The Plan

  Chapter Forty-Seven | A Chance

  What’s next for Alex Hawk? | Tribes of Kragdon-ah | Coming Spring of 2022 | Available for preorder here!

  Author’s Note

  Note From the Author

  Hello! This is an unusual book. In some ways, it is the thinnest book ever made, as the entire thing takes place between two lines of the previous book in the series.

  In Prince of Kragdon-ah, Alex Hawk and his intrepid crew were becalmed on the ocean when they were swallowed by a fog. That happened at the end of Chapter Seventeen of Prince.

  Chapter Eighteen kicked off with them emerging from the fog.

  What happened in between those events? Why were they all nearly starved? How did two strange people come to be onboard the ship, and why could they all suddenly understand each other’s languages? Those questions, and many others, were never answered in Prince.

  I am happy to say that all those answers lie ahead of you in this story.

  Thanks for reading.

  Shawn Inmon

  Chapter One

  Into the Mist

  Alex Hawk stumbled and pitched forward onto the deck. It wasn’t because of any sudden motion from the ship, he just became overwhelmingly dizzy. He took one stumbling step, put weight on his recently injured leg and found that it wouldn’t support him. He tumbled gracelessly to the deck.

  Torana’s huge hands picked Alex up as if he were a child. He held him in the air, checking him over to see if he had injured himself further. On the deck, looking up at Alex, Monda-ak whined his concern.

  “Dad? Are you okay?” Amy asked. “You don’t look so good.” In the turmoil of the moment, she had spoken in English, which only her father and sister would have understood.

  Alex looked around him and saw that confusion reigned everywhere. Bodies were splayed here and there on the deck. Some were moving, others were not. A number of people had vomited and the deck was slick with it.

  But the boat itself was not moving.

  They were still in the doldrums.

  Alex looked at Amy. “Tell him I’m fine. He can put me down.” It was slightly embarrassing for the commander of the army to be held up like a small child.

  Amy looked up at Torana. In the Drakana language, she said, “He is stubborn and wants to be put down, instead of carried.”

  Torana, who could understand language, but could not speak, looked skeptically at Alex. Ever since Alex had been shot through the calf in the battle to claim the ship from the Drakana, Torana had appointed himself as Alex’s transportation system around the ship.

  The giant gently set Alex on the deck.

  Alex took the weight off his left leg and hopped to the port side of the ship. He looked down at the still-calm water. They had been in one place for weeks, with no wind at all to move them along.

  Then the fog had approached them and they had passed through it. Alex couldn’t point to any exact reason why, but a sixth sense told him that now that they had passed through the fog, they weren’t in the same place they had been before.

  He had been dizzy and confused for a few moments, but the fog between his ears was lifting. He heard the anguished cries from a number of spots and turned to survey the upper deck of the ship.

  Then he looked up at the sky. He squinted and shielded his eyes from the glare, then asked Amy quietly, “Does the sun look right?”

  That is not a normal question. It is difficult to look right at the sun in full daylight, so it’s not a measurement people are often told to take.

  Amy peered up like her father did, also squinting.

  “It looks too big.”

  “Right. That’s what I thought as well. Don’t mention it to anyone, but let me know if you hear anyone else talking about it.”

  In addition to those who had become sick, it appeared that a number of others had passed out. In the back of his mind, Alex actually thought they looked dead. He had seen much death in his life, but he didn’t want to accept it here.

  Among others, Alex spotted Wenta-eh, the tall and strong warrior who had broken through the wall in his basement, which had started this whole series of adventures. She lay still and unmoving on the deck.

  He couldn’t fathom any reason why healthy people would just pitch over dead. He was frustrated by his inability to move. He looked up at Harta-ak, who was standing by the ship’s large wheel. He was quick-witted in almost any circumstance, but at that moment, he looked as lost as Alex.

  Amy was the first to completely regain her wits. “I’m going to check on those who have fallen. I’ll find our healers and see what they can do.” She took off to do just that, not waiting for Alex to confirm the order.

  Alex shook his head, knocking the last of the cobwebs out of it.

  At that moment, he felt something that had been missing for weeks.

  Wind. A gentle breeze, promising movement—finally—touched his face. It al
so brought a bit of relief from the sun, which blazed down on them. The sails, which had hung limply from the masts, ruffled a bit.

  Harta-ak and Pictin, the Drakana navigator who had pledged to help Alex, leaped into action. They began barking orders to the sailors on deck, telling them to climb into the rigging and adjust the sails to take advantage of the wind. After being becalmed for so long, it was enough to have a reason to move, to take action.

  Harta-ak and Versa-eh converged on Alex at the same time.

  “What was that?” Versa-eh asked. “Was that something that came from your time?”

  “The fog?” Alex asked. “No, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Pictin put his nose in the air as if he was a dog catching a scent. He looked down at Alex and Harta-ak. “Something is wrong. Something is...different.”

  Alex looked around again. He had the same nagging feeling as Pictin, but aside from the sun, which appeared to be a little too close, he couldn’t see anything to justify it.

  Alex Hawk was a man of action. He hated to wait around for a situation to reach critical mass before reacting, but here, he had no choice. There was no obvious opponent in front of him. If there was an enemy, or even a battlefield, it was invisible.

  Amy hurried back to report in. “So far, we’ve got six dead people. No idea what killed them. There are no wounds, no sign of attack at all. They just dropped dead. Two men and four women.”

  “Form a team. Send them to search the ship. See if we’ve lost anyone else.”

  Amy turned and put together a small group and set them to their task, then returned to her father’s side.

  Alex saw the gigantic Tinta-ak, his wife Fantem-eh, and the leader of the archers, Nanda-eh. He waved them to him. Quietly, he said, “Something is happening, but I don’t know what it is yet.”

  Tinta-ak nodded. Alex had long-since earned the big man’s trust and he accepted whatever Alex told him as the truth.

  “Nanda-eh, gather your archers and spot them at various points around the ship. Bows strung and an arrow out. Put one or two up in the rigging.”

  Nanda-eh spun away, also glad to have something to do.

  To Tinta-ak and Fantem-eh, he said, “Get four units of ten men. Post one fore and aft, then port and starboard. Make sure they are armed and have them stay alert.”

  “Anything I can tell them to be on the lookout for?” Fantem-eh asked.

  Alex’s continuing confusion showed on his face. “Anything. If they see anything that isn’t this ship or the ocean, have them yell out.”

  “What course should we hold?” Harta-ak asked. “Now that we have a little wind?”

  “Good question,” Alex said. He wanted to say, ‘The same course we were on,’ but after being stalled at sea so long, he wasn’t sure what that meant, or what direction that was.

  Alex snapped his fingers. “The compass! That will help us get underway until we can see the stars tonight.” Harta-ak had never seen a compass before getting on the ship, but the Drakana had used them for generations. Another gift that the godhead Makinta had brought with him when he had stepped through his own door.

  Alex turned to Amy. “Translate to Pictin for me.” She nodded and in the universal language, Alex said, “Pictin, can you check the compass and see what our heading is?”

  Amy translated as best she could and Pictin gave the Drakana salute—a quick swipe across his forehead with the back of his hand—and waited for Harta-ak to relieve him at the wheel.

  The compass was stored in a watertight box at the back of the small deck where the wheel was. He opened the box, peered inside, then tapped it. He knit his brows, tipped the box a bit, then set it back down.

  “Everything all right?” Alex shouted.

  Pictin walked to the edge of that deck and looked down. In Drakana, he said, “No. It’s not working.”

  Amy’s translation skills were growing, but still somewhat limited. She didn’t wait for her father to respond, but instead asked, “How can a compass not work? Is it broken?”

  “I do not know the answer to that question,” Pictin answered.

  Amy passed the information on to Alex with an uncertain shrug.

  Alex felt his frustration bubble up inside him. People were sick, people had died, and now Pictin was giving him mystery answers. He reached up and touched Torana’s shoulder, which was the signal he wanted to be picked up.

  Torana carried him to the upper deck and set him down so he could look at the compass. The needle pointed as if they were heading due north, which had not been their course. “What’s wrong with it?” Alex asked. “It just shows we are heading north.”

  Pictin picked up one edge of the box and tilted it slightly. Instead of holding its direction like it should, the needle slid listlessly and then showed they were heading west.

  Alex stood and tried to comprehend what he was seeing. He scratched the back of his head, trying to think what could make magnetic north suddenly disappear.

  His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a sound he should not have heard.

  It was the unmistakable sound of an internal combustion engine.

  Chapter Two

  Lost

  Everyone on deck cast their eyes left and right, then up at the sky.

  It was one of the most unlikely sights Alex Hawk had seen since he crossed through the door the very first time.

  It was a biplane.

  In a bad movie, the people who lived in caves might have peered up at the plane and said something like, “Angry bird coming!” This was not a movie, however, and the people of Kragdon-ah were not clichés.

  Alex’s warriors looked up at the sky, then immediately at him. They knew he almost always held the answer to odd mysteries.

  Alex wanted to explain, but there was of course no word for airplane in any of the Kragdon-ah languages.

  “This is stama. Something that came from my time,” he said. That wasn’t completely accurate. The only biplane Alex had ever seen was in a museum. Still, it was easier to say it was from his time than to explain the niceties of different aviation eras to them.

  “It is a plane.” He used the English word and hoped that they would just accept it, which they seemed to. An unfamiliar word for a completely unfamiliar object. “The better question is, how can it possibly be here? Where the hell are we?”

  His stomach sank as he realized that he was, through no fault of his own, hopelessly sidetracked from his mission to rescue his Kragdon-ah brothers and sisters who were enslaved by the Drakana.

  Everyone on deck craned their neck upward, following the flight of the plane. The buzz of the motor grew louder as the plane descended toward them. It had been perhaps a thousand feet above them when they had first heard it, but it dropped down until it was less than half that.

  Alex squinted and strained his eyes but couldn’t make out who or what was piloting the plane. The only clue he could gather was that he thought he saw a long scarf or piece of fabric flapping in the breeze behind the open cockpit. He told himself that was probably his imagination. He thought he had likely watched too many WW1 movies as a child.

  “Dad,” Amy said, returning to gawk up at the plane. “How is this possible?”

  “As far as I know, it’s not. I think if there were a civilization on Kragdon-ah capable of producing an airplane, we would know about it by now. I think the Drakana army is the height of technology in this world, and they are several hundred years away from creating anything like that.”

  “Impossible, maybe,” Amy answered. “And yet, there it is.”

  The biplane circled them several times, as if the unseen pilot was taking a good long look at them. Then the motor sputtered for a moment and the plane dipped further toward the waves. For a moment, Alex thought it was going to crash into the waves. Then the engine caught again, coughed, and turned back the way it had come.

  Alex tapped Torana on the arm and indicated he wanted to be picked up, as high as possible. The giant picke
d him up and put Alex on his shoulders, like a father at Disneyland.

  Alex shaded his eyes and watched the path of the plane, doing his best to commit it to memory. In the middle of a body of water with no landmarks to remember, that would be difficult. From his high vantage point on the giant’s shoulders, he scanned the horizon, wondering what might appear next.

  A biplane, then what? A Japanese Zero? A B-2 Bomber?

  The immediate answer was nothing. The blue sky was empty, devoid of everything, even seabirds.

  Alex tapped Torana’s shoulder and was lowered to the ground. He found it difficult to command troops while riding on the shoulders of the giant.

  He gathered Harta-ak and Pictin around him. “What are the chances we can catch that fog bank? If we can catch up to it, maybe we could pass through it again and end up where we started. Because right now, I have a hunch we are nowhere close to there.”

  In answer, Harta-ak ran to the tallest mast and scampered up the ropes until he was seventy-five feet above the deck. Agile as a squirrel in a tree, he twisted this way and that, covering a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees around the ship. He quickly dropped back to the deck and hurried back to Alex.

  “No sight of the fog anywhere. Do you have any idea which way it was traveling?”

  Alex pointed halfheartedly behind them but realized that was not enough. His shoulders sagged. “No. Not any usable idea.”

  “While we’ve got the wind, then, which way shall we plot a course?”

  With no compass and no stars at the moment to guide them, Alex was stumped.

  The wind, which had been blowing steadily, if somewhat languidly, ceased. It was not a normal cessation of wind, slowly lessening, then stopping. Instead, this felt like a switch had been turned off. Instantly, the sails drooped again and whatever minimal progress the ship had been making slowed.

  “I don’t like any of this. It feels like I’ve slipped into a nightmare,” Alex said.

  Sanda, who had climbed up in the rigging, bow and arrow at the ready to take on all opponents, cried out. “I see something!”

  “On the water or in the air?” Alex asked. Another question he never anticipated having to ask in Kragdon-ah.