The bald brute from the Night Marauders laughed, a booming sound of arrogant dismissal that echoed off the clay walls. He didn't give the youth's cryptic words a single ounce of importance. To him, a hundred armed men against a single brat meant absolute victory, regardless of whatever brave front the boy tried to put up.
However, standing just half a step behind him, the leader of the Cat's Eye Bandits—a lean, rat-faced man who had survived the frontier on pure, paranoid instinct—suddenly narrowed his slit-like eyes. He reached out, his hand gripping the brute's tattooed shoulder to pull him back.
"Hold your horses," the Cat's Eye leader whispered, his voice laced with a sudden, icy drop in confidence. "Something is wrong. The brat looks entirely too calm. His eyes... those aren't the eyes of a coward."
The bald brute snorted, shaking him off. "You're seeing ghosts, you rat. He already threw the stones in the dirt. He's paralyzed."
