Slowly, aware he had all the time in the world, Matlin brought his own mace up. I'm going to kill this man, he thought. I can kill this man now. I merely have to drive the head of the mace against his abdomen, ripping through the wall of muscle to the quivering viscera beneath. He will scream, the blood will flow, the mace will fall from his nerveless fingers, and they will hail me here as hero. But I have saved the man Ranmut's life, so why should I kill this one? The thought astonished him: it was no Kedaki thought....
Symbolic of his triumph, he placed the head of his mace against Felg's belly and pushed. The big Kedaki stumbled back, the wind driven from him. He collapsed on the floor and his mace, still spikefast in the hardwood, quivered there. Matlin walked to it, braced both feet, strained his back, and drew it clear. Then he took both maces and returned them to the melgast.
"No! No!" screamed Felg, his breath returning. "Kill me! Kill me, you fool!"
Ranmut said, but quietly, "Kill him, lord. He would have killed me. He expects to be killed. Otherwise, his honor dies. Kill him, lord."
Matlin looked at the barkeep, who shrugged and held his silence. The faces of the crowd told him nothing. And Felg's woman? She had no love for Felg: she was Felg's companion for the night, no more. She wore the look of a Sphinx on her beautiful face and when she saw Matlin watching her the smile she turned on him was a smiling of the mouth only. Her eyes were cold and distant, but beautiful.
Matlin took one of the maces from the melgast. The spikes held blood, and bits of scraped skin and flesh adhered to them. So this was the mace Felg had used, for blood had been drawn from Matlin's ribs. With this mace, Matlin walked to the man he had conquered. Felg had not risen from the floor. He sat there and he looked up at Matlin, who made no move to use the mace, and he said, his voice a tight whisper now, barely audible, "Will you kill me? I can't stand the waiting."
"I read somewhere," Matlin heard himself saying, "that at the moment before death life is so precious that a man will crave it even if it is a life of torment on torment, a life of torture, a life of terrible pain. But life, any life, rather than the black sleep of death. Life as a slave, and toil without end, and streaming sweat mixed with blood, but life! This I read, but of course it was not on Kedak, for here on Kedak death means nothing. Well, does it?"
"Kill me now," said Felg, uncertainly.
Matlin lifted the mace slowly. "Here on Kedak, how can death hold such terrors? Death is not the unknown. Death is not a sleep of forever, a sleep without waking, or the unproven expectation of sharing a dream of immortality with the god. Death here on Kedak is merely a way station in the passage of life, many lives. So why should we fear death? You believe this, do you not? Believe the transcripts from the Book of the Dead as our religious teachers read them?"