The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

‘that we are only soldiers because that weak man makes us soldiers. He grows the grain that feeds us, he tans the leather that protects us and he polls the ash trees that make our spear-shafts. We owe him our service.’

‘We have a chance’ – Arthur leaned on the high rampart as he spoke – ‘to make a Dumnonia in which we can serve our people. We can’t give them happiness, and I don’t know how to guarantee a good harvest that will make them rich, but I do know that we can make them safe, and a safe man, a man who knows that his children will grow without being taken for slaves and his daughter’s bride price won’t be ruined by a soldier’s rape, is a man more likely to be happy than a man living under the threat of war.

‘Oaths are sacred, even to those of us who wonder if any God cares enough to enforce them.

One man has to be a king who is no king, and that one man must relinquish the powers of the kingdom when Mordred is of age.

that’s what soldiers do, remember? They fight the battles for people who are too weak to fight for themselves.

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

Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they’re putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.

We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again.

‘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.’