The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you’ll just weep yourself to death.

Battle assaults the senses, and that assault ferments fear, and obedience is the narrow thread that leads out of fear’s chaos into survival.

Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies.

‘I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,’ I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.’