Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.
My words still sounded lame, but the truth so often limps off the tongue in times of crisis. Just when we most need to speak with the tongues of angels, we stumble with uncertain words.
My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred and his father was also called Uhtred.
My banner was behind me and that banner would attract ambitious men. They wanted my skull as a drinking cup, my name as a trophy. They watched me as I watched them and they saw a man covered in mud, b...
Meu estandarte estava atrás de mim, e atrairia homens ambiciosos. Eles queriam minha caveira como uma taça para beber, meu nome como troféu. Olhavam-me enquanto eu os olhava, e viam não um homem cober...
Life is simple, I said. Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.
King Alfred’s dream was turning into reality. I am old enough to remember a time when the Danes ruled almost all of what is now England. They captured Northumbria, took East Anglia, and occupied all o...
I’m in pain all the time, I said, and if I gave in to it then I’d do nothing.
I paid him, Lawford said indignantly.If you want a job done properly, Sharpe said, you do it yourself. Hell!
I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother’s stories of Cuthbert’s miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden’s worshippers cried much.
I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything.
I have never asked you for anything. But what would you have asked for? She stared into the ripples of the stream. What you gave me, she said after a while, kindness. Nothing else? She paused. I would...
I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin,
Children are easily swayed by religion, which is why it is a good thing that most eventually grow into sense. Chanting monks led the procession, then came children with green boughs, more monks, a gro...
An army isn’t made of its officers, you know, though we officers like to think it is. An army is no better than its men, and when you find good men, you must look after them. That’s an officer’s job.
Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
É um poema triste, e portanto um poema verdadeiro. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, diz ele. O destino é inexorável. E wyn eal gedreas. Toda alegria morreu.
Of every night you must be open to the Gods, and if
An arena where, so Merewalh’s priest told me, Christians had been fed to wild beasts. Some things are just too good to be true and so I was not sure I believed him.
You can’t live somewhere, he told me, if the people don’t want you to be there. They can kill our cattle or poison our streams, and we would never know who did it. You either slaughter them all or lea...