The fugitive blew through a doorway. I was only two steps behind, but when I got there the door was closed and locked. I flung one granite shoulder against it. It gave about a thousandth of an inch. Y...
The Lady made a few gestures around Bomanz—who looked pretty moth-eaten—and said a few words in a language I did not understand. Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin a...
That is something I like to look at with any villain. What twists and knots went into the thread tying the creature at Charm to the little girl who was? Consider little children. There are not many of...
Pull up a step, Ace, I told him. He did, but he had the fidgets. He kept looking for his lucky exit. I told him, I didn’t really want you. But I can’t get ahold of Winger. Not that I’d tried. What? Wh...
I can laugh at peasants and townies chained all their lives to a tiny corner of the earth while I roam its face and see its wonders, but when I go down, there will be no child to carry my name, no fam...
He surveyed his audience with that look of sublime solemnity only a drunk can muster.
Combat is fear and management of fear far more than it is organized murder. Those who manage fear best will seize the day.
Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.
A man lay before me. He had sunk as low as any I had ever known. Then he had fought his way back and back and had become worthy. A man far better than I, for he had located his moral pole star and set...
A club of sunshine whacked me right between the eyes. Like to laid me out. Gah! An ill omen for sure. These bright days are never kind. Everybody I ran into would be just like the weather: warm and su...
You can’t convince me that I’m obligated to save you from yourself.
Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which the...
What did we do today to frighten the world?
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints.
The sergeant major roared like a bear who’d broken a tooth while gnoshing on somebody’s skull. I made out no distinct words but in all the history of the universe sergeants major never have been requi...
The old general amazed himself. The woman amazed him even more. Sometime in the wee hours the exhausted boss general promised, Tomorrow night again. Within the walls of Stormgard. Maybe in Stormshadow...
The law isn’t always about what’s right. Or wrong. A lot of times it’s about somebody being guaranteed an advantage over somebody else. And that’s human nature. That’s the nature of any sentient speci...
The common wisdom among former grunts is that competent generals wouldn’t have screwed up so bad they got themselves killed and therefore there wouldn’t have been any need for a memorial. Soldiers are...
Only way you’re gonna have a world with universal equality is if you got one where there’s only one guy left standing.
Maybe. We're all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!