Pendragon (The Chronicles of Arthur, #2)

by Peter Gibbons

there was no magic that he could see. Just a sword, luck and hard fighting. But legend has its uses.

‘You’ll be needing that, I think. It’s not the sword or the legend. It’s you they believe in. A man of no nation who fights for all Britons. One of us. A man who wins, and who doesn’t fight for any king or kingdom. You fight for all the people of this land, and so do I. What

‘Let them come. Let them come and die.’

‘You are not yet healed,’ Arthur said as he surged to fight at Balin’s side. ‘Nothing could keep me from this fight,’ he said, and cracked a Saxon’s helmet apart like an egg.

‘And he shall never be my husband. I would rather die. The gods grant us but one life, and it is not my destiny to rot in a dark chamber in the Bear Fort, in a land damp and hard with rock and rain.’

‘Our hearts can be free if we have the courage to strive for what we truly desire. Why should we submit to the will of others?

‘You smell like an old goat.’ ‘Come now, go easy on a soldier.’ ‘An old goat who has rolled in a pigsty and ridden through a bog.’

How is it that good men die, and evil ones live on to hurt and make others suffer?’ ‘Merlin says the gods like to be amused. Perhaps he is right.’

You say the legends are lies, but when lies make love with fear, they become the father of belief.