An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure (Book 1): A Door Into Time

by Inmon, Shawn

  Alex could see the shoulders of a pack of dire wolves rippling above the grass.

  Alex watched in fascination, not even sure what outcome he rooted for as he watched Douglas Winterborne fight for his life.

  Winterborne had his rifle.

  Kragdon-ah had the dire wolves.

  Winterborne sighted in on one of the figures in the grass and pulled the trigger. Blood spattered up from the wolf in a high, arcing spray.

  If he had hoped that the noise would frighten the rest of the pack away, he had backed the wrong horse.

  Before the body of the first wolf crashed to the ground, five of its brothers and sisters threw themselves into the attack.

  Winterborne stayed calm, which impressed Alex. He continued to eject shells and fire. He managed to take down two more before the first wolf launched itself at his backside. The wolf hit him with its front shoulder, knocking him to the ground. The remaining three wolves leaped at the downed man.

  Winterborne’s screams echoed off the hills. They were terrible, but brief.

  Alex turned back toward Denta-ah, but not before he saw that he had been discovered by the alpha female wolf. She raised her head, viscera dripping from her fangs. Her pale-yellow eyes examined Alex without blinking. She looked at him for a long moment, then returned to feeding on Douglas Winterborne.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Aftermath

  Alex did not push his luck. He turned and ran toward Denta-ah. He followed the game trail back the way he had come, but when he emerged into the small clearing where the tunnel was, he didn’t crawl back into it.

  No way I make a round trip through there.

  He looked up and saw smoke rising from beyond the walls of Denta-ah. He chose to simply run alongside the wall until he came to the front gate again.

  When he appeared there, the warrior guarding where the gate had been gawked at him. He had seen Alex run toward the dead-end of Denta-ah and now he was here, as if by magic. The man tipped a two-fingered salute to Alex, who returned it.

  The gate itself was mostly gone—either burned or still burning. The walls that had formed the outer courtyard were much the same. Unless a sudden downpour appeared to dowse the fire, Denta-ah was done for.

  Kunta.

  He saw Sekun-ak and hurried toward him. The man’s burns, which had looked horrible when fresh, were far worse now. Skin was sloughing off the side of his face, his left shoulder and arm. Still, he walked tall.

  “Doug-ak?” Sekun-ak asked.

  “Doug-ak is dead. I watched Ronit-ta eat him while he screamed.”

  Sekun-ak considered that. “Likely a better death than I would have given him.”

  Alex looked around at what had once been the outer courtyard of Denta-ah. The walls were burning, but in the middle, a strip of land had been turned into an emergency hospital and triage. Sekun-ak was a born leader. He had organized a cadre of men and women to search for helpful herbs to make dressings and poultices for the wounded. He had organized healthy men to dig graves for the dead. Those who were capable cared for the wounded, making them as comfortable as possible.

  “Where will you dig the graves?”

  “Right there,” Sekun-ak said, pointing toward a spot where men were already digging a long hole.

  “One for the Denta-ah and one for our army?”

  A look of amazement crossed Sekun-ak’s face. “Why would we do that?”

  “To keep the bodies separated? So we know where our men are and where theirs are?”

  “I have said before,” said Sekun-ak, the man who spoke very little, “there are times I do not understand the way you think. We are all one. Those who were once enemies are no longer enemies in death. We are the conquerors; they are the vanquished. They fought well, and bravely. They are once again my brothers and sisters.”

  Alex nodded, a habit he still couldn’t break. “Where do we go from here?”

  With the battle finished, Alex felt more comfortable turning command over to Sekun-ak and his lieutenants. He saw things from a different perspective than Alex, and he was the proper leader for this phase. Not to mention that Alex was as tired as he had ever been. He wanted nothing more than to let go of all responsibilities, lay down, and sleep for several days.

  “After tomorrow, the men who joined us from other tribes will go to their homes. There is no reason for them to return to Winten-ah. They will share the story of our victory in every village they pass.”

  A sudden pang of guilt struck Alex. “The children of Stipa-ah. I told them we would return for them.”

  “I have already sent a group of warriors to bring them here. It is safe now, and they can join us for the nanka-tu.”

  Alex was nearly as fluent in Winten-ah as he was in English, but he had never heard that phrase. “The nanka-tu?”

  “Yes, the nanka-tu. The feast to end all feasts where we celebrate those who died and those who lived and begin to tell the stories that will live for many generations.”

  “Should we maybe hold off on burning the entire village, then? Hard to have a feast when we’ve burned the village to the ground.”

  “We are not burning the village itself. Not yet. Just this outer area. I have warriors carrying water to stop the spread of the fire from reaching the village.”

  “What do we do with the Denta-ah who did not fight? We can’t just kill them.”

  “Why would we do that? They will return with us to Winten-ah. They are no longer Denta-ah. That village is gone forever. They are part of us now.” He waved a hand toward the bodies men were carrying to the grave. “It will help us rebuild after those we have lost. We will take care of them and they will be one of us.”

  “In Kragdon-ah, you are much more civilized about your wars than we are where I come from.”

  “We are more civilized in everything, I think,” Sekun-ak said without a trace of irony.

  Alex looked up to see Monda-ak limping toward him as fast as his injured hindquarter would allow. When he got to Alex, he bowled him over, then cleaned Alex’s dirty face with his tongue.

  “Monda-ak,” Alex said, wrapping his one good arm around the dog’s neck. “You saved my life today.”

  Monda-ak looked at him calmly. He already knew that was true.

  Alex took in Sekun-ak, who stood firmly erect, but had a slight wobble. “Come, brother. Let someone else organize this now. You are more injured than those you are taking care of.”

  Alex looked to where the interior gate had once stood and saw a form so massive, it could have only been Tinta-ak.

  When he saw Alex, he broke into a run, limping only slightly due to the gash on his leg.

  Before he got a chance to ask the question, Alex said, “He’s dead. Ronit-ta.”

  Tinta-ak contemplated that. Like Sekun-ak, it was apparent he thought Doug-ak had gotten off lightly. Alex tried not to think about what they might have had planned for him. Maybe letting the giant red ants feed on him, while the giant cockroaches skittered over him.

  “Let’s help the injured in to where the village was. We can take better care of them there.”

  “That includes you,” Tinta-ak said softly.

  “And you,” Alex said. “But let’s prioritize those who are badly injured first. Then we can tend to us.”

  Alex led Sekun-ak to a room with many communal mattresses. He would have liked to put him in Winterborne’s log cabin, which was both private and nicer than anything else in the village. He knew instinctively that no one would want to stay there, so he didn’t bring it up. Sekun-ak would be happiest where he was among many of his friends. When Alex looked at his skin—covered in what appeared to be second and third-degree burns, he wondered how he had stayed upright for so long.

  He designated that particular house as the burn ward and gathered the other warriors who had been damaged by the boiling oil that was poured on them. There would be long, painful days and nights of recovery for all of them and they would wear the scars of their burns until the end of t
heir days. No one would ever have to ask them where they were during the Battle of Denta-ah.

  Once Alex got a few other houses set up as medical areas, he submitted to care for himself, leaving Tinta-ak in charge for the rest of the night. One of the women of Denta-ah, who was now a woman of Winten-ah, ministered to him with the same care Niten-eh would have shown him in the caves back home.

  She looked at the rough patch job Sekun-ak had done on the battlefield and made disapproving noises. In the universal language, she said, “I am sorry. I am going to have to hurt you before I can make you better.” The bandage Sekun-ak had stuffed inside the wound had crusted over and needed to be removed so she could sanitize the wound and put a healing poultice on it.

  She gave Alex a piece of wood to bite down on and went to work.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Nanka-tu

  The next morning, Alex woke to the same woman rolling him over to examine his wound. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down, albeit more gently than Sekun-ak had done the day before.

  Alex felt like he had a hangover combined with the flu, combined with ten rounds of mixed martial arts fighting.

  Senta-eh sat on her haunches a few feet away, petting Monda-ak, who accepted the attention with good grace. He had always liked the attention of women.

  “Good morning,” Alex said, both to his nurse, Senta-eh, and Monda-ak.

  “You look horrible,” Senta-eh said.

  “And yet you still look as lovely as ever. Maybe I should have been an archer instead of a foot soldier.”

  “Maybe. I’ve seen you shoot, though, so probably not.”

  Alex tried to look over his shoulder at the woman changing his bandages. “I’ve heard in some armies, the leader gets respect.”

  “We respect you enough to tell you the truth. And the truth is, you look like the back end of an alecs-ah after a bout of diarrhea.”

  “You really know how to hurt a guy.”

  “That is true. I do. All warriors of Winten-ah do. But, that’s not the reason I am here. The nanka-tu will be starting soon. We cannot start without you.”

  “Good enough. I’ll be out as soon as my nurse gives me the go-ahead.”

  Without another word, Senta-eh slipped away.

  A few minutes later, with a fresh poultice applied and a new bandage wrap, Alex tried to stand. Again, the nurse held him down.

  “One more minute,” she said. She rubbed her hands together as if she was trying to start a fire, then cupped them against Alex’s lower back. She moved them gently back and forth, warming the whole area. She repeated the process up his spine, carefully avoiding his injured area, then did the same up and down his legs and his right arm.

  “There. Now you can go fight the warrior woman if you want and you might have a chance.”

  Alex stood and stretched, amazed. “I don’t know what you just did, but I feel close to being human.”

  “It has no name now. It was once called a Denta-ah remedy, but Denta-ah no longer exists.”

  Alex hadn’t stopped to consider what life looked like for these refugees from Denta-ah. They had woken up yesterday on top of the world. Now, they were without a country, aside from the one that had forcibly adopted them. As always, in every world, to the victor goes the spoils.

  “Will you be part of the nanka-tu?”

  The woman looked at Alex as though he had perhaps absorbed a blow to the head the previous day. “Of course. I am Winten-ah.”

  I’ve just got to admit that I am out of my element with understanding these things and let it go at that.

  “Thank you for taking care of me.”

  The woman waved him away but smiled as she did.

  Outside, Alex squinted in the unexpected brightness. It was obvious that preparations had been underway for hours. A massive slab of meat turned on a spit over a low fire. Everyone hustled around with jobs to do and no one paid Alex any attention.

  He headed to the burn unit, but before he could step inside, Sekun-ak came out. He held up his unburned hand and said, “Some of the warriors are burned badly. We should talk out here, so they can rest.”

  Alex looked at the layers of loose, soft bandages that covered most of Sekun-ak’s upper body.

  Some of them are burned badly, huh? But not you, right?

  “Did you organize all this?”

  “A large job divided by many people is easily accomplished.”

  Or, ‘Many hands make light work,’ as we would have said.

  Sekun-ak nodded at a scene playing out in one end of the courtyard. The children from Stipa-ah were gathered around a small group of people. “They are orphans no more.”

  “Are those their parents? Are they really that lucky?”

  “They are their parents now. I don’t know if they gave birth or fathered the children. But, they are from Stipa-ah, which is no more, so now they are all Winten-ah.”

  “They won’t go back to Stipa-ah? Try and start over there again?”

  “No. Stipa-ah has been conquered. It is gone forever. Maybe another village will spring up there someday, but not for many years. When we go past it on our way home, we will burn it to the ground, just as we will with Denta-ah when we leave.”

  Alex thought about it and saw a certain wisdom. Winten-ah had suffered great losses when it spearheaded the effort to eliminate the stama. If either Denta-ah or Stipa-ah were left standing, the tribe members might think longingly of it. Perhaps even attempt to return there. But if the villages are gone, they will only have Winten-ah. Within a generation, those other villages will only be memories passed down through stories and legend.

  For the rest of the afternoon, while the massive animal on the spit turned and turned, everything of value that wasn’t stama was moved out where it could be divided between the conquerors. Everything from medicine and bandages to food stores and livestock was gathered at the outer edge of the first gate.

  The stama—the trebuchet, the crossbows, other things they found scattered around the camp, would be part of the bonfire that would mark the end of Denta-ah.

  Alex and Sekun-ak walked along the long grave that the warriors had dug the day before. Almost eight hundred bodies were buried there now, tribes from all over Kragdon-ah sharing their final resting place.

  The heaped dirt that marked the grave ran from where the front gate had once stood all the way to Denta-ah proper.

  As the sun set, a woman from Denta-ah stood at one end of the grave line, a woman from Winten-ah at the other. They both began a chant in the universal language. The chant mentioned honor, bravery, and coming together when the conflict was over. A crowd lined up alongside them. As they chanted, they moved toward each other. Eventually, they met in the middle, embraced, and raised their hands together.

  The last of their chant echoed away as the sun set behind the hills.

  Alex, Sekun-ak, Tinta-ak, and Senta-eh walked from the village, each carrying a torch. They stood at the four corners of the pile of stama and touched a torch to it, moving clockwise. When the ring of fire was complete, they tossed their torches onto the pile and watched the flames grow.

  The day before, the troughs of Denta-ah had been filled with boiling hot liquid intended to maim and kill their enemy. Today, the troughs were filled with mead.

  The flames rose and warriors and former Denta-ah filled their cups with mead and drank their fill again and again. They may have had an injury to their head, leg, or arm, but with a little mead in them, they all seemed capable of doing what Alex thought of as the Kragdon-ah jig.

  The beast on the spit was carved and dispersed along with more of the mead. A woman who had been Denta-ah the day before began to sing a song of the battle. When she grew tired, a Winten-ah warrior stood and sang another few verses from his perspective. This went on for more than an hour.

  The victors also get to write the history.

  Alex watched the whole scene play out in front of him, until Tinta-ak lifted him up onto a small storage shed.
He looked out at the gathered throng. Yesterday, they had been both friends and enemies. Today, they were one.

  “A great battle was fought here against a brave and tenacious foe. There were many times I thought the outcome could have gone either way. In the end, we were fortunate to have the wind blow in our direction.”

  The crowd cheered, Kunta, kunta, kunta over and over—even the former Denta-ah members.

  “Now, I am tired of war. Tired of planning. I only want to think about the next hunt, the next harvest.”

  The crowd quieted.

  An image flew across Alex’s brain. Amy, four years older and wondering where her father had gone. “Really, I just want to go home.”

  The crowd cheered, thinking he meant Winten-ah. Alex, of course, meant something altogether different.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The Somber Homecoming

  After the massive bacchanal the day and night before, the burning of Denta-ah seemed almost an anticlimax. Everything of value had been stripped from the village. The gates and massive fences had been burned, the same as all signs of stama had burned in the bonfire.

  The village was now just a few empty buildings, broken crockery and cookware, and heaps of rubble.

  Warriors went to each structure and touched a torch to the thatched roofs, then to another spot ready to be lit.

  Ten minutes later, everyone assembled on the same ground where the battle had been fought the day before. There was no marker on the long mass grave. Over time, the mound would settle and nature would reclaim it, as it would the village.

  The largest group of warriors headed first toward Stipa-ah, then would move on to Winten-ah.

  Smaller gatherings headed in all directions, taking stories of the kunta of Denta-ah with them.

  It was hard for Alex to say good-bye to so many warriors who had become friends. It was especially hard to say good-bye to Tinta-ak, because the huge man gripped Alex’s good shoulder with his ham-sized fist and wouldn’t let go.