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...
So now I shall write the tale’s ending with my sword beside me and I shall hope that I am given time to finish this tale of Arthur, my Lord, who was betrayed, reviled and, after his departure, missed...
So Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld would decide our fate. They are not kindly women, indeed they are monstrous and malevolent hags, and Skuld’s shears are sharp. When those blades cut, they cause tears that...
Our ancestors, he went on after a while, took this land. They took it and made it and held it. We do not give up what our ancestors gave us. They came across the sea and they fought here, and they bui...
One thing I learned about the Danes was that they knew how to spy. The monks who write the chronicles tell us that they came from nowhere, their dragon-prowed ships suddenly appearing from a blue vaca...
Obadiah Hakeswill had never been concerned by such enmity. Power did not lie in being liked, but in being feared.
Merlino mi fissò. - Credi che tu, Derfel, o Artù possiate essere tanto forti da resistere a Nimue? Lei è una donna. Le donne ottengono sempre ciò che vogliono, e se per ottenerlo devono rovinare il mo...
Masques are mere pious recitals, he said scathingly, devised to make the audience feel inspired with unending speeches about chastity, nobility, bravery, and other such nonsense. They're enchanting to...
Many men do not beat their wives, even though the law allows it and the church encourages it, but a man gains no reputation by beating a weaker person. Æthelred had beaten Æthelflaed, but he was a wea...
Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe? the Lieutenant asked.Don’t know, sir. Won’t know till we get there.You’re going to the mine?Aye, sir.There’ll be guards.Like as not.And only two of us.I can count,...
It was madness. And, as Finan had said, sometimes madness works.
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.’ Napoleon
In the middle of the nineteenth century a railway line was made from London’s Fenchurch Street to Southend and, when excavating at what is now South Benfleet (Beamfleot), the navvies discovered the ch...
I sometimes think,' Merlin said when no more suggestions were offered, 'that I am doomed to live among idiots.
I remember my first shield wall, I said, and I was scared. It had been against cattle raiders from Wales and I had been terrified. Since then I had fought against the best that the Northmen could send...
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 just gazed at the smoke haze above Lundene, the darkness darkening a summer sky, and wished I were a bird, high in that nothingness, vanishing. Haesten
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 had never thought it all through before, but suddenly, on that cold day, I understood that among the Danes I was as important as my friends, and without friends I was just another landless, masterle...