He shook his head. ‘To fight battles, Derfel,’ he corrected me, ‘on behalf of people who can’t fight for themselves. I learned that in Brittany. This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak, especially if you’re a soldier. If you’re a warrior and you want a man’s daughter, you just take her; you want his land, you just kill him; after all, you’re a soldier and you have a spear and a sword, and he’s just a poor weak man with a broken plough and a sick ox and what’s
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