What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness and success, and why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I will see a corpse. Alfred preached humility...
We might know how it ends, but like all good stories it bears repetition. So here it is again, the story of a battle.
We honour great men, we admire aristocrats, we applaud actors, we shower gold on portrait painters and we even, sometimes, reward soldiers, but we always despise merchants. But why? It’s the merchant’...
We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn t...
Trinity Royal, which was being nuzzled by a dozen small launches nosing into her flank like piglets suckling on a sow.
This time, if God wills it, we shall replace him. A man bitten by a snake once does not let the snake live a second time.
There is a famous painting of the young Napoleon crossing the St Bernard Pass on his way to the Italian campaign which rocketed him to fame. Louis David’s canvas shows him on a rearing horse, and ever...
The world began in chaos and it will end in chaos. The gods brought the world into existence, and they will end it when they fight among themselves, but in between the chaos of the world's birth and t...
The hellequin, she said icily, are the dead who have no souls. The dead who were so wicked in life that the devil loves them too much to punish them in hell and so he gives them his horses and release...
The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.
The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims.
That’s bloody obvious. A schoolboy with a palsied brain could have worked that one out.
That man is my Arthur, a great warlord and a hero who fought against impossible odds to such effect that even fifteen hundred years later his enemies love and revere his memory.
That is why battles of the shield wall are slow to start. Men have to nerve themselves for the horror.
Tell me how Gisela can be married to a man she's never met?'Aidan glanced across at Guthred as if expecting help from the king, but Guthred was still motionless, so Aidan had to confront me alone. 'I...
Tell Ragnall, I told him, that the Saxons of Mercia are coming. Tell him that his dead will number in the thousands. Tell him that his own death is just days away. Tell him that promise comes from Uht...
Stow all the world’s evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction.
Soldiers were not paragons; they were scarred, vicious men who took delight in destruction.
So, with no real plan for my future and content to let fate
So you settle to be a slave, eh? Yes, lord, no, lord, let me hold your prick while you piss all over me, lord?