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

  The Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure Series

  A Door into Time

  Lost in Kragdon-ah

  Return from Kragdon-ah

  Warrior of Kragdon-ah

  Prince of Kragdon-ah

  Warrior of Kragdon-ah

  Book Four of The Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure Series

  Copyright 2020 by Shawn Inmon

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One | Oregon

  Chapter Two | The Horns of a Dilemma

  Chapter Three | Kragdon-ah

  Chapter Four | Attacked

  Chapter Five | The Slow Chase

  Chapter Six | Another Skirmish

  Chapter Seven | Danta-ah

  Chapter Eight | Caged

  Chapter Nine | The Attack on Danta-ah

  Chapter Ten | Discovered

  Chapter Eleven | The Chase

  Chapter Twelve | To the Death

  Chapter Thirteen | Manta-ak Returns

  Chapter Fourteen | Invaders

  Chapter Fifteen | Meet in the Middle

  Chapter Sixteen | Mandran

  Chapter Seventeen | Attacked

  Chapter Eighteen | Destruction

  Chapter Nineteen | Under Siege

  Chapter Twenty | Escape

  Chapter Twenty-One | Escape Redux

  Chapter Twenty-Two | Godat-ta

  Chapter Twenty-Three | The Valley

  Chapter Twenty-Four | To Ready for Battle

  Chapter Twenty-Five | Reggie to the Rescue

  Chapter Twenty-Six | Thundan

  Chapter Twenty-Seven | Torana the Great

  Chapter Twenty-Eight | Torana the Great Redux

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Nine | Celebration

  Chapter Thirty | Winten-ah

  Chapter Thirty-One | Rinta-ah

  Chapter Thirty-Two | Panga

  Chapter Thirty-Three | To Heal, to Home

  Chapter Thirty-Four | Drogon

  Chapter Thirty-Five | News from Away

  Chapter Thirty-Six | Urpan-ah

  Chapter Thirty-Seven | The Journey

  Chapter Thirty-Eight | Pista-ta

  Chapter Thirty-Nine | Stung

  Chapter Forty | Garta-ah

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two | The Third Thundan

  Chapter Forty-Three | Enslaved

  Chapter Forty-Four | Makim

  Chapter Forty-Five | Rats

  Chapter Forty-Six | The Threat

  Chapter Forty-Seven | Friends

  Chapter Forty-Eight | The Kiritan

  Chapter Forty-Nine | The Kiritan Redux

  Chapter Fifty | Freedom and an Exile

  Chapter Fifty-One | Darand

  Chapter Fifty-Two | To Exile or Not

  Chapter Fifty-Three | The Hunt for Eggs

  Chapter Fifty-Four | The Caravan

  Prince of Kragdon-ah | Coming in April 2021 | Available for preorder here | .

  Author’s Note

  For a different take on time travel

  Chapter One

  Oregon

  Twenty years had passed since Alex Hawk returned from his adventures in Kragdon-ah.

  Many things were the same. Alex lived in the same house as before. There was no way he could ever sell the house. Not with a doorway to the far-future world of Kragdon-ah sitting right behind the two brick walls he had rebuilt in his basement. He was older, of course. He had been in Kragdon-ah for ten years when the returning humans altered his physical appearance and sent him home. Physically, then, he was forty-seven years old. In every other way, he was a decade older than that.

  Mondak, known as Monda-ak in Kragdon-ah, was ten years older, too. In any normal dog, that would mean he was at the end of his life cycle. Not so for his species, which were particularly long-lived. At twenty, Mondak was still massive and strong. No gray hairs had appeared. Alex thought he might easily live another twenty magnificent years. Alex’s only problems were making sure Mondak got enough exercise and trying to keep him from prying eyes as much as possible. When they were out on the trails hiking and some stranger laid eyes on him, their inevitable first reaction was to jump and say something like “Gah!”

  Mondak had been very good throughout his time in civilization. He hadn’t crushed a single skull since he had left Kragdon-ah.

  Alex’s two daughters were another case altogether. Through a twist of time travel, both Amy and Sanda—born Sanda-eh—were the same age. They had been four years old when they met, and were twenty-four now.

  They had both left Alex’s house for four years to go to college, but had returned after finishing school. After all the years living with their father, the rest of the world seemed boring to them.

  Amy was the very image of her mother, with dark, curly hair framing her lovely face and fair complexion. At 5’9”, Amy was tall, but nothing like her sister. Sanda’s mother had been nearly seven feet tall. At 6’2”, Alex’s DNA ensured that Sanda would not be that tall, but she was still six inches taller than her father.

  Both young women had been trained in fighting and martial arts by their father from a young age. Like her mother, Sanda was a natural bow master. She chose not to compete, feeling her birthright gave her an unfair advantage, but she could have easily medaled in Olympic Archery if she had so chosen.

  Amy was fascinated by blades of all sorts, but spent most of her time focused on the katana. When she graduated high school with a 3.97 grade point average, Alex had bought her a katana from a master swordsmith at Hanwei forge. Some girls wanted a convertible as a graduation present, Amy wanted that particular katana. Sanda teased her, saying that the sword was her first boyfriend. Amy corrected her, saying it was simply her first love outside of her family.

  Alex and his daughters spent as much time as possible off the grid. They challenged themselves by walking into the woods with no modern equipment and surviving for weeks at a time. By the time they were teenagers, both girls were trained survivalists. They could fish, trap, hunt, and build a shelter with nothing but what was provided by nature, though Sanda much preferred to bring her bow.

  Alex had continued with his tiny house business, but as the years passed, trends shifted and fewer people were in the market for Craftsman houses under 250 square feet. He had banked the overflow income when business was good and paid off the mortgage on his house early. With the expense of college past—mostly offset by scholarships for both of them—he knew they would be fine.

  Each time they planned one of their survivalist trips to a mostly uncharted area, both girls begged Alex to take the brick wall down and let them really try to survive.

  Each time, Alex rejected the idea. Not in an if you beg me really hard, I might change my mind sort of way, but in a no means no way. That didn’t stop the girls from constantly asking him if they could go to Kragdon-ah.

  That is where the Hawk family was one Tuesday afternoon in the summer of the twentieth year after Alex, Sanda, and Mondak had returned from Kragdon-ah. They had turned the living room into a staging area for a long trip into some of the lower elevations of Cayuse Mountain in Washington.

  They were discussing just how primitive their starting kit would be, arguing over whether to take a flint, or if they should start with a few days’ food or not. It wasn’t hunting season, so they would have to content themselves with snares and the sort for food.

  “I think we should take a flint and at least a few days’ food,” Alex said.

  “And we think you’re going soft in your old age,”
Amy said, with an emphatic head nod of agreement from Sanda.

  At that precise moment, a reverberating boom shook the whole house.

  Alex reached out protectively to his girls, though they were just as steady on their feet as he was.

  Mondak barked loudly, frightened out of his nap.

  Two seconds of dead quiet passed, then another boom shook the walls, causing a picture to jump off the nail in the wall.

  “Sonic boom?” Amy asked. “Military testing?”

  “It didn’t sound like it came from that far away,” Alex said.

  Immediately, there were three more booms in rapid succession.

  Alex jumped to his feet. “That’s not coming from outside the house. It’s coming from the basement!”

  Alex sprinted for the door to the basement, barely beating Sanda. The four of them pounded down the stairs as another of the crashing booms echoed through the house. Alex looked at the source of the noise. The pounding was coming from the other side of the brick walls he had built to keep Kragdon-ah where it belonged.

  In the twenty years since he had returned, there had never been so much as a gentle scratching from the other side of the wall.

  Now, the outer wall bounced dangerously with each of the blows.

  “Girls, go upstairs and close the door behind you. Mondak, stay here with me.” Alex kept his eyes trained on the wall, but sidled over to his tool bench. He picked up a small sledge and hefted it, gauging the weight. He laid one hand on Mondak’s shoulder and said, “Wait until I tell you. Don’t attack before then.”

  Mondak growled deep in his chest, his gaze also on the wall. It had been years since Alex had heard him make that sound.

  Amy and Sanda had, somewhat surprisingly, gone upstairs when Alex had told them to. They did not close the door behind them, and reappeared at the top of the stairs, armed with their favorite weapons—a bow and arrows and a katana—a moment later.

  Alex was so intently focused on the wall, which continued to bend slightly at each continuing blow, that he did not notice they had returned.

  Finally, the wall couldn’t hold. One blow knocked two bricks loose. A whoosh of fresh air ran through the room. With a small opening, what or whoever was on the other side redoubled their efforts.

  More blows came with rapid-fire intensity and the small hole became larger. Finally, it was big enough for a man or animal to step through.

  A woman’s head, long hair dripping wet, pushed through the opening. She saw Alex standing with his hammer in hand and Mondak beside him.

  With a worried frown, she said, “Manta-ak. Come quickly. We need you.”

  Chapter Two

  The Horns of a Dilemma

  “Wenta-eh?” Alex asked. He didn’t know what he had expected to come through the wall, but it definitely wasn’t her. Sekun-ak, maybe. Some great beast, possibly. But not Wenta-eh, older sister of Werda-ak, who had accompanied him as he chased after Lanta-eh’s kidnappers and died in the pursuit.

  Wenta-eh appeared older now. Twenty years had passed and she was no longer the young woman in her twenties Alex had left behind. She had grown into her maturity. When she stepped across the broken threshold of bricks, she towered over everyone, including Sanda.

  “Whoa,” Sanda said, marveling at her height.

  For the first time, Alex noticed his daughters. He shot them a glare, then turned back to Wenta-eh.

  “Wenta-eh, that is you, isn’t it? You’ve changed.”

  “I’ve grown into myself,” the woman said, raising her chin. “But you must come. We need you.”

  “Slow down,” Alex said. He hadn’t realized he had slipped back into speaking the language of the Winten-ah. “What is happening? What do you need from me?”

  “Strangers came. They had new weapons. Stama. They overran us, even in our caves. They have captured Sekun-ak and all the Winten-ah.”

  Sanda stepped forward and out of the shadows. In Winten-ah, she asked, “How did you escape?”

  Wenta-eh looked at her and blanched. “Senta-eh? But—”

  Sanda held up a hand to stop her. “Senta-eh was my mother.”

  “Of course, of course. You are so young. But she was not much older than you when The Plague of the Mothers took her.”

  Sanda nodded. It was a novel experience to meet someone other than her father who had known her mother.

  “When Sekun-ak saw that we were going to be overrun, he sent me to hide behind the waterfall. He told me to come here and get you if he was killed.”

  “Was he? Killed, I mean?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. He led our warriors in the battle when the invaders reached the upper caves. They had strong nets they threw over our fighters, then clubbed them over the head. I think they wanted to capture as many Winten-ah as they could.”

  “What did the invaders look like?” Alex asked. “Like all of the Winten-ah?”

  “No, they were short. Only a little taller than you, Manta-ak. And pale. They would not be able to spend a day in the sun.”

  “But they had new weapons?”

  “Their weapons were very loud and hit us from far away. We couldn’t get close enough to fight them without getting killed.”

  Gunpowder, Alex thought. They’ve got gunpowder. Kragdon-ah will never be the same.

  “Please,” Wenta-eh said “We must hurry.”

  “Did this all happen just now?”

  “It took me a bit to break through the wall, but yes, this just happened. That’s why we need to hurry.” For the first time, she looked at her surroundings. “This is a very strange place, Manta-ah. We often talked about what the place was like where you went, but none of us would have guessed this.”

  Alex Hawk looked pained. He was obviously on the horns of a dilemma. He had made an impetuous decision to step through this door once before, and it had taken ten years and a technological miracle to get him home.

  At the same time, Sekun-ak was his brother in every way that bond could be formed, aside from being born by the same woman. They had stood shoulder to shoulder at the Battle of Denta-ah. They had taken a long and perilous journey home and Alex knew very well that he might not have survived without Sekun-ak.

  He looked at his daughters. He knew it was too dangerous to allow them to go. No matter how eager they might be to explore the world of Kragdon-ah, they had no idea what was on the other side of that door.

  His face twisted in a sour knot of regret and angst, Alex said, “I’m sorry. I cannot come. My life is here, now.”

  The three humans looked at him, shocked. Both his daughters’ mouths hung open slightly in surprise. Wenta-eh’s shoulders slumped. She did not argue.

  “I understand, Manta-ak. That is your right. You have already given much to the Winten-ah. We have no right to ask more.”

  Those words were a dagger to Alex’s heart, but he stood firm, convinced he was doing the right thing.

  Wenta-eh turned and stepped over the crumbling bricks toward the shimmering black door. She did not think to apologize for the damage she had caused. She had simply done what she needed to in order to carry out her mission.

  “Wait!” Amy said. “What are you going to do?”

  Wenta-eh turned to look at her. “You speak our language too?”

  Amy nodded at Alex. “He taught us the language since we were little. It was our secret language.”

  Wenta-eh put two fingers to her forehead. “What am I going to do? This is my tribe. I will do everything I can to free them. If I cannot, I will die with them.”

  In her stubborn expression, Alex saw the perfect reflection of her younger brother, Werda-ak.

  “Dad! This is your family, too. If they are in danger, you have to go and help them. You have to.”

  Alex shook his head.

  “I want to go more than anything. But my life is here with you now. What if I step through this door and never return. Where does that leave you girls? I know this seems like a big adventure to
you. It would have to me when I was younger. But now, my responsibilities are with you.”

  Wenta-eh put two fingers to her forehead, acknowledging the truth of that statement. Without a word, she stepped into the blackness, through the shimmering door, and was gone.

  Both Amy and Sanda stared at the doorway, unable to believe what had just happened.

  “If you’re worried about us, we’ll go with you,” Sanda said.

  “Yes!” Amy chimed in, excited at the idea.

  Alex knew that was coming. He weighed their words. He had learned long ago not to dismiss the thoughts of his daughters out of hand. Just because he was older definitely did not mean he was wiser.

  “If we went through together, and one of you was killed or badly injured, I would be devastated. I could never forgive myself. I spent a decade being used as a weapon by the United States government, but Kragdon-ah chewed me up. I was half-dead when the visitors restored me to full health. I know you’re young, strong, and skilled, but so was I.”

  “But you were Manta-ak, the great warrior. We would just be foot soldiers, there to help your other family.”

  Alex thought of the many battles he had engaged in, both on this side of the door, and in Kragdon-ah.

  “Too often, it’s the foot soldiers that die first. I’m sorry, but that’s the end of it. You two go about your business. I’ve got a mess to clean up here, and a wall to rebuild.”

  Amy and Sanda looked at each other. They often communicated silently, as they did at that moment. They knew their father was intractable, or at least appeared as such.

  Without another word, they went upstairs, leaving Alex alone in the basement.

  He set the sledge gently on his bench, fighting the pent-up energy and disappointment inside. He pulled a case out from under the bench, opened it and took out a two-bladed ax that he had made himself years earlier. It was finely balanced, with a composite shaft and a razor-sharp edge on the steel head. Beside it in the case was a stabbing sword with an eighteen-inch blade. It was a modern replica of the weapon Senta-eh had used for up-close fighting. He had created both for himself when he had considered the possibility that he might someday return to Kragdon-ah.