A voice called: "It would be far fairer."
Other voices took it up, and Felg's beautiful woman companion turned and looked coolly, then with quickening interest, at Matlin. She smiled at him and it was a smile like consuming flames. She said, with a laugh, "Oh, Felg! Poor Felg, you're in for a fight now."
Ranmut stared at Matlin. Someone pushed Ranmut forward and Matlin took the mace from his hand. He patted the little man's shoulder because Ranmut still looked dubious, and then someone cried a warning. Matlin barely had time to realize it was the woman, and then—from the corner of his eye he saw Felg charging!
Felg came so swiftly that Matlin barely had time to whirl and face him. Felg came like a rocket, his big brutal face contorted with hatred. Felg came with a wild bellow meant to stop Matlin dead in his tracks. Felg came with a rush and the rush spelled death. Then Felg swung his mace.
All this happened in a split-second. Matlin threw himself to the floor, lacking time to bring his own mace around to parry the unexpected attack. The mace blurred by inches over his head as he went down and he realized that it would have split his skull like a ripe melon had he still been standing. Spike-studded, it crashed into the side of the bar, splintering the richly-grained hardwood as if it had been a flimsy sheet of wickerwork.
The spikes caught and held in the wood, but with a wrench of his hand Felg got them loose before Matlin could climb to his feet. Felg swung again, putting his whole body behind the blow. He swung downward and the deadly head of the mace splintered the floor as it had splintered the hardwood bar. It had been so close that some of the spikes caught in Matlin's tunic. When he scrambled upright, he was half naked and there was a welt from his armpit to the bottom of his ribcage.
He swung his own mace, but Felg caught it expertly with the haft of his weapon, twisting suddenly and almost tearing the mace from Matlin's grasp. Then Felg advanced with a lightning-swift series of short, jolting blows from his weapon. Matlin took them all on the haft of his own, but his hands ached with the shock and his arms grew numb. Across the room he reeled before the powerful onslaught. Sparks leaped between the maces as they struck; the sounds were of a smithy in hell.
Felg was big, powerful. Matlin knew he must summon memory to survive the attack, for already his arms dragged so wearily he barely could hold the mace crosswise in front of him with both hands to take the rain of blows. Something he must remember ... had to remember ... must bring forth to save his life....
He fell abruptly to one knee, and the Polarian tourist woman gave a little scream of terror and enjoyment. Leering, sweat streaming from his face, Felg brought his mace up for the coup. And Matlin dropped his other knee to the floor.
Felg's face spoke mutely of Felg's knowledge of the move, but the heavy mace already swung down and could not be checked. It blurred across Matlin's shoulder, the spiked head splintering the hardwood floor behind him. For an instant, Felg leaned over him, wrenching at the mace helplessly and exposing his middle.