We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.
We believe there are many gods, so we accept another man’s religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it their duty to kill, maim, enslave, o...
Uhtred of Steapa - He might be dumb as a parsnip but he knows how to fight.
This was a clever man, as clever as Alfred, and he knew that weakness invited war.
There is a greater war, Uhtred. Not the fight between Saxon and Dane, but between God and the devil, between good and evil! We are part of it!
Then, just as d‘Alembord was about to sell his commission and retire to one of his prospective father-in-law’s farms, Napoleon had returned to France. Colonel Ford, worried that he was losing his vete...
That was why he was thinking about vultures. He was thinking that he wanted to run, but that he did not want to feed the vultures. Do not get caught. Rule number one in the army, and the only rule tha...
Svein had offered to talk. The Danes, quite suddenly, had stopped raiding. Instead they had settled in Cridianton and sent an embassy to Exanceaster, and Svein and Odda had made their private peace. W...
Step forward again, hold the shield steady. Peer over the top. Fear is screaming somewhere deep. Ignore it. You can smell the shit now. Shit and blood, the stench of glory. The enemy is more frightene...
Of the insolence of the Scots, my father used to say, there is no end.
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam.(No amé, pero anhelaba amar)
No, fate is difficult. Is all ordained? Foreknowledge is not fate, and we may choose our paths, yet fate says we may not choose them. So if fate is real, do we have choice?
Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price,
Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.
It was, predictably, a morning ceremony, for nothing good comes of endeavours undertaken when the sun is in decline,
If the Danes come, he spoke to Wulfhere, you must let me fight.You don't know how to fight.Then you must teach me. He slid Serpent-Breath back into the scabbard. Wessex needs a king who can fight, he...
If the Danes are outnumbered, my father told me that night, they won’t fight. They’re like dogs, the Danes. Cowards at heart, but they’re given courage by being in a pack.
If my body is recovered, Colonel, pray have it sent back to Normandy. My companion, on the other hand, is from Boston, so you may allow his body to rot in whatever noxious swamp it comes to rest. Come...
I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurred into the chaos to continue the killing.And that w...
I was just twenty-one and my name was known wherever men sharpened swords. I was a warrior. A sword warrior, and I was proud of it.