The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom, #10)

by Bernard Cornwell

‘I’m thinking like my enemy. You should always plan your battles from the enemy’s point of view.’

When rumours fly, when false tales are being told, be the storyteller.

The Scots were my enemies. The West Saxons were my enemies. Bebbanburg’s garrison was my enemy. Ieremias was my enemy. Einar the White was my enemy. So fate had better be my friend.

the most outrageous lies were often the most readily believed.

I have rarely seen a sea as calm as on that starlit, silent night. It was as if the gods held their breath,

Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes.

The chaos was about to be unleashed, but for the chaos to give me victory I needed everyone to believe that what they saw was what they expected to see.

We would live if we were fast and die if we were slow, and so my men charged with an eagerness that looked like confidence.

I would rather make Ieremias’s world a reality and so live in harmony, but there is always some man, and it is usually a man, who looks with envy on our fields, who wants our home, who thinks his rancid god is better than ours, who will come with flame and sword and steel to take what we have built and make it his, and if we are not ready to fight, if we have not spent those tedious hours learning the craft of sword and shield and spear and seax, then that man will win and we will die. Our children will be slaves, our wives whores, and our cattle slaughtered. So we must fight, and the man who fights with confidence wins.