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He looked like a man who had spent half a century falling down a mountain. Perhaps one made of axes.
She was an onion made of only skins with nothing at the centre.
In a leader, no one wants to see doubts.
That impossible smile while all around him men raged and wept. An eye of calm in a hurricane of panic.
You can stack your doubts high before. You can polish your regrets up after. But while the fight’s on, your purpose must be pure. Kill the enemy. Don’t die yourself.
The world could burn to ash and blow away and all could be lost, but his word would still stand.
“I knew you had it in you,” he whispered. He didn’t say what she had in her. Shit, maybe. Lies, probably. Doubts, definitely.
Half a dozen monsters, yet it was the princess who’d slain him.
Jakob found out who he was. And he hadn’t liked the bastard very much.
He was quite the kiss-arse, but that’s monks for you. Pay a man to grovel to God three times a day and he’ll soon be grovelling to everyone.
“Where would be the value in prizes easily won?
You’ll find enough folk want you to suffer, there’s no need to help the bastards.
“So! We smile. No, we smile. Not a skull’s rictus, you are not graded on acreage of teeth.
A necromancer cannot afford to be put off by a mild fragrance of putrefaction, after all.
Sometimes the fight finds you, and you have to meet it as you are.
“You should be like water. Take the shape of wherever you are and make the best of what floats past.”
Good companions and bad ones—so much depends on the circumstances.
In the end, time gives everyone the kick in the sack they deserve.
“People, and great figures especially, are rarely all hero or villain.”
“I have always desired, above all, to be thought a wise man. I have begun to realise it might even be a good idea to be one. And a truly wise man must accept that, however much he knows, there is always far more to learn.”
What kind of great purpose, after all, is easily realised?
To be the arrow takes all the faith I have left. To aim the arrow … I’ll leave that to those who still believe.”
“There’s more to everyone than meets the eye,” said Jakob. “Brother Diaz is a man in search of a purpose. Without it, he is a curious choice. If he were to find it … who can say what he might do?”
“Thought you didn’t believe in God anymore.” “Maybe I was hoping … that he still believed in me.”
“My greatest battles I fought against myself, and they were all defeats, and I’ve suffered far less than I deserve.”
But sometimes the right word can nudge a life towards the light, and a life changed is the world changed.
“No matter how you fight, you can’t beat time. It lays low every Empire, topples every tyrant.”
“It’s not what you’ve done that makes you good or bad. It’s what you do next.”
A kiss, when you know it’s leading nowhere … what’s it worth? It’s just a reminder of what you don’t have. The first sentence of a story that’ll never be told.
