Defend what’s left. You can have fifty men.Fifty! That’s not enough...Forty, I snarled, and if you lose the fort I’ll cut your kidneys out and eat them.We were at war.
Cowardice is always with us, and bravery, the thing that provokes the poets to make their songs about us, is merely the will to overcome the fear.
And I was so tempted that night in Cippanhamm’s royal church. There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world’s evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will b...
Abel Becket had never seen as much of his wife's breasts as Mrs. Loring saw fit to present to the world.
A humble god! You might as well have a toothless wolf! The gods are the gods, ruling thunder and commanding storms, they are the lords of night and day, of fire and ice, the givers of disaster and of...
Æthelfrith
Were
Thinking of her, he felt a sudden longing inside him. She had the face of a hawk, slim and cruel, with dark hair and eyes. Teresa was beautiful as a fine sword was beautiful; slim and hard.
Had given an oath and honor binds us to paths we might not choose.
You'll call me a damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of christian children. This was all said cheerfully. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christia...
You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself,
Yet to complain of the world’s unfairness was the same as grumbling that the sun was hot or that the wind sometimes changed its direction. Unfairness existed, it always had and it always would, and th...
Yes, sir, Hicks said. He was a small young man, very officious, who would never contradict a superior. If Morris claimed the clouds were made of cheese Hicks would just stand to attention, twitch his...
We live in a world where the strongest win, and the strongest must expect to be disliked.
We are going to soak this rock with blood! I am Uhtred! I am the lord here. This is my rock!
Tomorrow, he shouted, you do not fight for me! I fight for you! I fight for Wessex! I fight for your wives, for your children and your homes! Tomorrow we fight and, I swear to you on my father's grave...
To be discreet, ‘he looked up to glare at Æthelflaed, ‘chaste! Keepers of the home! Good! Obedient to their husbands!’ Those are God’s own words! That is what God demands of a woman! To be discreet, t...
Till time ended, Baird suspected, there would be uses for a man and his sword. He
There, ahead of me, was the enemy.I love the Danes. There are no better men to fight with, drink with, laugh with or live with. Yet that day, as on so many others of my life, they were the enemy and t...
There are times, Leofric grumbled, when you are an earsling. An earsling was something that had dropped out of a creature's backside and was one of Leofric's favourite insults. We were friends.