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"My life has been threatened from the day I was born. All of my waking hours have been spent avoiding danger in one form or another. And sleep never comes easily because I always worry if I'll live to see the dawn. If there ever was a time I felt secure, it must have been in my mother's womb, though I wasn't safe even there. You don't understand! If you lived with this fear, you would have learned the same lesson I did: Do not take chances. . . ."
"So what are you saying?" said Eragon: "that anyone who lifts a finger at you deserves to die, no matter who they are or what shape they're in?"
"If that's what it comes to, ya better believe it," said Murtagh, kneeling down to clean his sword. "The Empire is run by slavers and murderers, and they'll go to the ends of the earth to get what they want. Anyone with a sword in their hands and a threat on their lips ought to be mowed down. That's the world we live in, and I'm playin' by its rules."
"That's what you do, eh?" said Eragon. "So what would you care if Saphira and I did away with you here and now?"
Murtagh looked over his shoulder and aimed a dull face at him.
"You killed Torkenbrand. You sent those slavers on the run. You may have given our enemies even greater chase. If we cannot outrun them, we may as well try to outrun your lifeless corpse."
Murtagh kept glaring at him, his hand twitching for his sword, but one look at Saphira and her massive ivory talons sticking halfway out of her paws, and his hand fell back to his side.
"You see?" said Eragon. "Your own morals work, up until the minute they don't. You know why we don't kill you?"
"Because you need me, that's why."
"No, you fool. It's because we care. Despite what you did a moment ago," and he blindly waved a hand at the truncated body bleeding out in his peripheral vision, "we still want you to be safe. We think you are worth the risk."
"Ach," said Murtagh. "All this jaw about love and friendship. Yer makin' it too complicated."
"No, you make it too simple. If pain were so horrible, what good would doctors be? If pleasure were all that mattered, why work? If life ended in no way but death (which seems to be the only way it will ever go), why not abort all babies now, to spare them the misery of life? Facts do you no good and do not give you any real morals unless we all agree on values. Life is better than death, health is better than sickness, pleasure is better than pain. Not all the time, obviously, but often enough for us to live by it. Life, health, and pleasure are all things we value, but we get those from facts. Facts inform values, and values inform what's right and wrong."
A smile twitched across his face. "And yes, Saphira and I need you, just as you need us. When that changes, we will bid you farewell and good fortune."
Murtagh nodded, a cynical smile aimed at the ground, and he lifted his head and smirked at Eragon. "Yer morals work, but only until they don't," he muttered. "All this jaw about values and facts and morals is just a scholar's mind game. Out here, there is no philosophy, no morals, no ethics—just a world and an Empire that are hellbent on doin' away with us."
"That is the old fear talking, Murtagh."
"No. It's a fact. If I kill ya, ya wouldn' 'ave any morals to speak of, 'cause ya wouldn' 'ave any breath in ya, neither. And if ya attacked me, I would turn on ya in a heartbeat, and we both know I would lop off yer 'ead as easily as I lopped off his." With a nod of his head, he turned to Torkenbrand's draining corpse. "He was a risk that I removed. I refuse to repent, and I won't plague myself over what is done and past."
Eragon smiled in derision, then whipped one of the horse's reins out of the halter and wrapped them around Murtagh's neck. With a mighty tug, he shoved Murtagh into the ground, letting him land with a heavy THUD, and he planted a boot on Murtagh's chest and and aimed Zar'roc over Murtagh's throat. "Really?"
Eragon didn't even have time to smile. Murtagh lashed away and kicked Eragon's leg out from under him, sending him into the ground with a dull THUD, and he snatched Zar'roc and kicked Eragon onto his back and pointed Zar'roc between Eragon's horrified eyes.
Eragon gasped. Saphira snarled. Zar'roc gleamed in the sunlight, flashing rays of doom over Eragon's face. And Murtagh smiled and nodded at him as one word slipped past his lips:
"Really."
Eragon kept heaving for breath, Saphira growling and getting ready to strike. But without warning, Murtagh checked himself, rolled his eyes, and stepped away from Eragon and trudged back to his own sword. Behind himself, he dropped Zar'roc in the dirt, but not before he swung his head over his shoulder and said:
"Next time ya wanna try me, it'd better be for real."
THE END