An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah, стр. 39
Alex waited patiently to see if the commander would send more men down, but he did not seem inclined to do so.
Finally, Alex couldn’t take the suspense any longer. He slowly raised his head and peered over the side. He took a mental image of what he saw, and slipped unnoticed back behind the hill.
He closed his eyes and silently counted the number of men he had seen. Seventeen men left. He turned to Harta-ak with a smile.
Quietly, he crept back down the hill a few yards, then flashed a signal to Senta-eh. She did the same to her archers.
Alex stood, took a cleansing breath, then flashed a hand sign at Monda-ak. They both sprinted for the top of the hill and leapt off—Alex with a primal war cry and Monda-ak with a harsh, growling bark that loosened men’s bowels. Alex jumped with his two-bladed axe in one hand and his primitive rock hammer in the other. As he fell the ten feet to the ground below, he chose his landing spot, which was in the middle of three extremely surprised Lasta-ah.
ALEX DID NOT WAIT FOR the rest of his army to join him, but turned into a whirling dervish of destruction. He spun completely around, swinging both the axe and the hammer. The axe sliced easily through the bicep of the first man, who dropped the spear he had been holding and gaped at his arm, which spurted blood and dangled uselessly.
Alex’s hammer slammed home against the side of one man’s head, completely disabling him, then bounced off the chest of the third man, knocking him to the ground.
Monda-ak wreaked even more havoc. He landed on the back of one man who was staring down the hill for the attack and drove his face into the rock-hard ground. He used that man as a launching pad and threw himself at another warrior who, seeing the massive dog coming at him forgot he was even holding a weapon. He unleashed a soprano cry and held his hands up in front of him. Monda-ak barreled over him, biting off a long strip of the man’s cheek as he did.
Senta-eh and her archers popped up from behind and fired down, shooting fish in a barrel. Harta-ak and the rest of the warriors made a somewhat more-cautious jump off the top of the hill, but by the time they reached the camp, everyone was either wounded—writhing on the ground with arrows sticking out of them, or disabled by Alex—or had surrendered.
The man who held his hands out in front of him said something loudly. Alex asked him to repeat what he said in the universal language.
“We surrender.”
Alex’s blood was up and adrenaline surged through him. He couldn’t drive the image of the badly burned bodies of his work crew from his mind. He walked toward the man, gripping his axe so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“Are you the leader of these men?”
“Yes.” The man had just seen his entire unit subdued in less than a minute, but it was obvious he thought that since it was through trickery, it meant very little.
Alex took the man in. Tall, powerfully built. Wearing more armor than any of his warriors. He held the same type of two-bladed weapon Draka-ak had used when Alex had faced him. Where the Winten-ah had kind faces that split easily into smiles, this man looked as though he had never known a happy day.
Alex’s eyes flitted to a shorter, thicker man beside him. Same armor, different weapon. He held a large battle axe that to Alex’s eye looked impressive but unwieldy.
Alex stepped toward the taller man until the difference in their heights was noticeable. The top of Alex’s head fell below the shoulder of the taller man, who smirked when Alex drew near.
“Are you the man who gave the order to burn my friends?”
A man with any sense might have heard the pure malice in Alex’s voice. This man did not.
“I didn’t just give the order, I carried it out. No one else seemed to have the stomach for it.” He glanced disdainfully at his other men. He sneered at Alex. “Your people did not die well.”
Alex backed up and turned to his warriors. He looked grimly up at Senta-eh, who stood above, her arrow still nocked and ready, aimed at the big man in front of Alex.
“I need all of you to step back. Give us room.” His eyes searched the crowd. “Wenta-eh. They have a fire going already. Make it bigger.”
“How big?”
Alex cast his eyes from the top of the Lasta-ah commander’s head to his toes.
“Big.”
Wenta-eh grabbed two warriors near her and took all the firewood stacked beside the fire and threw it on.
Alex stood ten paces from the armed men, who now stood in an empty space in the middle of Winten-ah warriors.
“I am going to let you fight for your lives.”
The commander looked incredulous. “What?” He recovered. “Which of us first?”
Alex stretched his neck and shoulder muscles. “Both at once.”
A smile appeared on both men’s faces. It was most unpleasant.
The two men took only a moment to gather themselves, then rushed at Alex together. A bull rush, full of rage. It was much ado about nothing, as far as Alex was concerned. They were big and heavily muscled but not nimble.
Both swung their weapons in a killing arc, but years of fighting bigger opponents betrayed them.
As they rushed Alex, he dropped to one knee and ducked. The momentum of their swings took them past him. Without looking, Alex swung his axe and knife. The axe hit the back of the knee of the biggest man, severing both ligaments in his knee. Had he survived, he would have never walked again.
Alex aimed lower with his knife, slashing the thicker man across the Achilles tendon of his right leg.
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