Kindle Notes & Highlights
Mol gasped sharply. “That’s horrible! Why would a god demand that?” “I have known more than one scholar to waste his life trying to answer that, and lass, I shall not try. I avoid the gods and anyone who pays them more than lip service. I counsel you to do the same.”
“I am not—” “A lord. I know, I know,” Idgen Marte said, heading for the stairs. “Ya talk like a lord, have the armor and weapons of a lord, the horses of a lord, the links and the gemmary of a lord, and the bearing of a lord. But, nay, by all means, you are not a lord. If you aren’t a lord, you had better decide what you are, because a lord is what we’ve got every reason to think ya are.”
“What if he accepts?” “I kill him. Problem solved. Wine all round.” “What if he turns out to be a great river pirate who carved his way to the top of this mess? “He kills me. Problem solved. Wine all round.”
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Instead of brick, it was fashioned from a hotchpotch of grey, white, and brown stone and looked like an idiot’s approximation of a fearsome castle, only far too small and vulnerable.
“In the stories I heard, paladins were men of fair face and fairer voice. Refined and courteous. Parthalian, for instance. The stories say he was so beautiful to look upon that no maid could refuse him, yet in his honor, he never asked. There’s nothing about being broken-nosed and linkless, with all the wit and charm of a hunting hound.”
“The hammer makes no false promise of glory or nobility. You know precisely what it does, and precisely what the man swinging it in anger means to do.
When you read about battles in books it talks about lines and ground and maneuvers. In reality, you do not see any of that.
“Style,” Allystaire said, “is for dead men.” She snorted again and turned back to the house. “Style is at least half of the point.” He heard her mumbling something about ‘northern barbarians’ as she vanished into the darkness of the house.
“Pick a direction. Throw a handful of grass in the air,” Idgen Marte suggested, throwing up her hands, exasperated. “Piss at the wind and follow the stream. Does it even matter where? We just need to go.”
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He’s the Arm of the Mother. You’ll see.” “What about you?” “She called me Her Shadow.” “Eh? And what’s that mean?” Idgen Marte smiled broadly and began following in Allystaire’s tracks. “You won’t see,”
“I would not call it playing at war, dwarf,” Allystaire remarked coolly. “No? Then what would you call it, spending twenty, thirty years fighting a war nobody can win over a crown nobody seems to want.” “I agree it is senseless; that does not make it any less serious for the men and women and children who suffer and die.”
“Not a civilized time to make war. Humans, always with the dawn.” “There is no civilized time for war,” Allystaire said,
If the only plan you can ever come up with is walk straight at ‘em and count on pounding ‘em into jelly, well, there’d be a lot of dwarfish generals who’d approve of the way you think. And every single freezin’ one of ‘em is dead.
“We can’t kill everyone who wrongs our people, Ally,” she murmured—too softly, he hoped, for Torvul’s ear—“any more than we can save everyone who needs us. Don’t let it consume you.
“There’s no word in your tongues for, ah…” The dwarf paused, wrinkling his heavy brows. “A vein of ore that can’t be extracted without crashing the tunnel.
all these scars, these old wounds, they all taught me something. They are why I know what I know now. What would I be if I took them away?”
