“Your boss. Kyr Zemin. Psycho cyclops bastard. You can’t really miss him in a crowd.”
She ignored his acerbic description. “Why is he your number one? What did you do?”
Squinting up at her, he tucked the weapons into a pack. “Showed him multiple times that in a fight between an Andarion and a Phrixian, the Andarion always wins.”
She arched her brow at that. Dancer wasn’t bragging. He’d said it very matter-of-factly. And it spoke a lot for his skill level. She’d seen the commander spar enough to know that even with no depth perception and a serious handicap on that eye, he was still a lethal opponent. She could only imagine how much more lethal he’d been without his current physical limitations. “Personal grudge?”
“Yeah. He was my League ATA, and he took offense to the number of times I face-planted him on the mat during training. Then once I befriended Mari, it became all-out war.”
Her scowl deepened at that. “Why?”
“Mari’s his little brother. Whenever Kyr feels the need to lip off about Mari’s lifestyle, I’m possessed by the need to beat his ass for it.”
That explained a lot.
However, she pointed to the bodies around them and spoke the most obvious fact. “But these aren’t League assassins.”
“Which puts me back to my overwhelming list of enemies.”
“And the first runner-up is?”
“Jullien eton Anatole.”
She choked on the last name she’d expected to come out of his mouth. “The Andarion prince and heir?”
“Was. He’s still royal, but he’s been removed from the line of succession and direct lineage.”
“Because of you?”
He rose slowly and in an almost bashful, boyish gesture rubbed at his cheek. “I helped a little.”
“Sheez, Dancer,” she breathed, “you do not pick your enemies wisely, do you?”
“What can I say? Sometimes you have to put your foot down. Sometimes you have to put it up their asses.”
She rolled her eyes at his dry tone.
Darice and Thia poked their heads around the rocks near their cave.
“Dancer? You alive?” Darice called.
Unamused, Hauk stared at him. “No. Much like your common sense, I’m upright and dead.”
Sumi shook her head as she tucked surplus ammo into her belt. “I swear you have an advanced degree in sarcasm.”
He actually laughed at that while he latched his shirt shut before the kids saw it open.
When they joined them, he handed his primary blaster to Sumi and his secondary to Thia, who scowled up at him.
Hauk cupped her cheek in his massive paw of a hand. “They have me tagged and are coming for me, kisa. I need you to lead Sumi and Darice to Aksel’s base and call your father. Can you do that?”
Tears welled in her eyes, but to her credit, Thia blinked them away. “How are you tagged?”
“It’s embedded in his spine.”
Thia winced then nodded. “I will get the whole army here for you, Uncle.”
He kissed her brow. “And I will keep them away from you. Tell Fain that I’ll be at Canyon Point. He’ll know where that is.”
Darice stepped forward. “I will come with you.”
Hauk pulled him into a tight hug. “You’re not a warrior yet, mi tana. And I need you to guard the taras for me. Since the dawn of our civilization, War Hauks have protected the eton Anatoles. Respect our princess. Let no harm come to her, especially not the poison that drips from your tongue.”
Darice made a rude sound before his gaze turned deadly serious. “Take care, Dancer.”
“And you.” He went to retrieve the packs for them.
Sumi frowned as he only took the haul bag and a small portion of water for himself. “You’ll need more than that.”
He flashed a fanged grin at her. “I’ll be fine. Scrounging supplies is what I do best.” He jerked his chin. “Now go. All of you.”
Thia hugged him.
By the way he braced himself, Sumi realized that Thia must be pressing on his wounds. But he didn’t say a word.
As they started walking forward, she turned back to say one last good-bye.
Dancer had already vanished into the desert.
“He’ll be all right,” Thia assured her. “My father has always said there’s no one he’d rather have at his back than Uncle Hauk. And coming from my dad, that’s the highest endorsement and compliment.”
“Tactical assault monkey,” Sumi breathed, more to remind herself of his fighting skill than them.
Thia nodded before she picked up speed. “All right, soldiers. Double time. We have to get help, and fast.”
Hauk had been walking for hours. His side was absolutely killing him. But for wanting to put as much distance between himself and his family as possible, he’d have sat down and let the bastards come for a fight. It’d never been in his nature to dodge any battle. Busting heads was his favorite pastime.
But his family came first.
He opened a bottle of water and sipped at it. Then he took a moment to rummage through the electronics he’d scavenged from the assassins. If he could rig a strong enough booster, he might be able to reach The Sentella.
Or make a jammer to block the transmitter in his back.
As he worked on it, he tried to figure out when and how he’d been implanted. It defied logic. No one ever touched him that intimately.
No one except Sumi.
It wasn’t her, dumbass. He’d have known had she done it. Not to mention, she hadn’t touched his back until after the first group had attacked.
Mark one suspect off the list. Only a million and two more to go.
Hauk wiped at the sweat on his brow as he continued mulling over his infinite number of enemies. How long had the device been there? Honestly, he might have had it for years.
At home, assassination attempts were so common that he was only surprised when he went a week without someone trying to end him. It was just par for his life.
He raked his hand down his pants before he opened the back of a radio and started rewiring it.
“Why are you messing with those stupid electronics again, Dancer? You should be training and building your muscle mass. That shit won’t ever help you as much as fighting strength.”
Shaking his head to clear it, he tried to get Keris’s disdainful voice out of his mind. There was still enough of the poison in his system that it was playing havoc with his senses.
And he was mad as hell at himself about that. He should have known to check for poison after he’d been stabbed. It was a common practice for the Partinie to taint their blades. Bastards were callous that way.
Andarions viewed such tactics as cheating and cowardly, which was why he hadn’t thought about it. If you weren’t strong enough to kill with your hands or standard weapons, then you should perish with honor. That was how his people lived and died.
But Partinie, for all their knife skills, were basic cowards. They wanted easy kills they didn’t have to work for.
Hauk opened his shirt to check his throbbing side. The blisters where he’d cauterized the front wound had opened and were festering from his sweat. Curling his lip at the sight, he tore open an antiseptic pack to clean it.
Something rustled to the north of his position.
He dropped his hand to the blaster he’d confiscated from one of the assassins. A Rit weapon, it had a larger blast radius than anything except his modified Andarion PX8s. Damn, he missed his blasters. A gift from Darling years ago, they were his most cherished belongings. He’d even named them. The fact he let Thia and Sumi take them said it all about his feelings toward the females.