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.
Were the Romans Christians? I asked him, remembering my curiosity at the Roman farm. Not always, Ravn said. They had their own gods once, but they gave them up to become Christians and after that they...
Well damn him. I was not dead yet, and so long as I lived I would fight for Æthelflaed.
We were three ships in a summer's dawn, and we were going to battle.
Tomorrow! he said suddenly. His voice was high, but it carried clearly enough. Tomorrow we fight! Tomorrow! The Feast of St John the Apostle!Oh God, Leofric grumbled next to me, up to our arsholes in...
They’re the sort of dozy bastards who don’t think beyond their next pot of ale, but Thomas does, Thomas is a two-pot thinker, he is.
The rules were simple: trust no one, be ever watchful and if trouble came hit first and hit hard. It had worked for him so far.
The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the heroes who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I w...
The other held a hand toward the wretched boy in the dung-heap. Father Uhtred, he said. His name is not Uhtred, I snarled, and if he dares call himself Uhtred, I looked at him as I spoke, then I will...
The monks had murdered Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevole...
The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool.
The art of war, I told him, is to make the enemy do your bidding.
That dawn is seared on my memory, burnt there by the flames of a hall-burning. There was nothing we could do except watch.
So she needs a man! Hakeswill said. And a sergeant’s widow doesn’t get rogered by a stinking bit of dirt like you. It ain’t right. Ain’t natural. It’s beneath her station, Sharpie, and it can’t be all...
So long as we remember names, so long those people live.
So I woke, I listened, and I heard the small sounds of a wood at night, the things moving, the claws in the dead leaves, the wind’s soft sighs.
Says so in the scriptures,
Robin Hood’s Lament?’ Every archer knew that tune.
Ranks of men on foot, men with shields, men with weapons, a shield wall that was meant to awe us, and it did.A shield wall is a terrible thing. It is a wall of wood, iron, and steel with one purpose a...
Ragnall Ivarson. I had never met him, but I knew him. I knew his reputation. No man sailed a ship better, no man fought more fiercely, no man was held in more fear. He was a savage, a pirate, a wild k...