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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Gwynne
Read between
January 1 - January 3, 2025
The iron tang of blood, the stench of voided bowels. Death’s reek.
In the centre of the square two men were fighting. Or more accurately to Varg, a man and a tree were fighting.
“More important than a hump?” Svik said, raising an eyebrow. “I did not know that could be true.”
A strand of cobweb, thick as Elvar’s finger, ran from the rotted, hollowed trunk of a pine tree up into higher boughs. Elvar tracked it upwards, saw the cobweb spiral, spreading wide among the branches, dark husks hanging. Rats. A crow. A pine marten, big as a cat.
the troll swung a club of knotted wood, spiked with iron nails
I would like to know what is going on in that thought-cage of yours?
“Why destroy something that someone cared enough to build?”
It is inevitable. Death comes for us all,
“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway.”
This phrase runs through my mind so often...
I hate mead more than I hate Røkia.
“When I woke, I thought I was dead,” Varg mumbled. “And when I sat up, I wished that I was. I am never drinking mead again.”
“I know that, you little weasel-shite,”
the party emerging on to the crown of the skull like maggots from a wound.
Ten heartbeats, twenty and there was no sound.
her thought-cage turning.
“Your jarl will not escape my warriors,” he said, curling his lip in a false warrior-snarl.
fingers twitching, eager for his next move.
He could not have seen more than seventeen or eighteen winters.
carved wooden warriors were circled around the jarl, a net drawing tight to capture and kill him.
the searing winds that howled about the fortress had seemed to scour the alcohol from her veins.
Words and deed together, you hálfviti idiot.
“Eið okkar innsigluð með blóði okkar, lífi, dauða og kvalum, bundin með blóði okkar,”
a chorus of heya’s, oaths and cheers.
It is strange how quickly we become accustomed to better things.
“I am not a troll,” Einar said, giving Røkia a hurt look, “I just have big bones.”
the year approached the summer solstice, when daylight would hold the darkness at bay for a whole month.
“Stealth is never a possibility with you, Half-Troll,” Varg heard Svik mutter. “I am doing my best,” Einar grunted.
“It is sólstöður, the beginning of the long day, when night is banished from the sky for thirty days.”
“What is the difference between a Galdurman and a Seiðr-witch?”
Wizard vs. Sorcerer
“Wise? Of course it wasn’t wise,”
“You managed to take the cover from your spear, and buckle your helm on,” she said. “I am very proud of you.”
I knew people in the Army like that.
“Your humping behind the carts each night has been keeping me awake.”
her arm wasn’t doing what her thought-cage was telling it to do.
