The calm confidence in Aksai's voice didn't sound like someone bluffing.
Aksai looked down briefly at the small green snake curled around his arm. The creature lifted its head and flicked its tongue, as if sensing the growing tension in the air.
Then Aksai's eyes returned to Reymon, his smile faint but unshakable. "No," he said softly. "What I'm about to do is something much more "intense" than that."
Reymon's eyes narrowed until they were thin slits. For a long moment he simply looked at Aksai, watching how the man held himself—calm, almost careless—beneath the clear afternoon sky.
A thousand memories ran through Reymon's mind in a flash: the long hunt, the bounties, the failed campaigns that had stretched his pride thin.
He had ordered whole armies, asked allies from distant kingdoms and lawless provinces, and still Aksai had vanished like a ghost.
