The Shadow of the Gods (Bloodsworn Saga, #1)

by John Gwynne

“Death is a part of life,” Orka whispered into her son’s ear.

He is too gentle for this world of pain, Orka thought.

It was spring, signs of new life in the world below, but winter still clung to these wooded hills like a hunched old warrior refusing to let go of his past.

When gods go to war, it is no small thing.

This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.

“Because I do not know the reason for a thing, does not mean that a dragon-god did it,” Elvar said.

Maybe madness. I do not take the time to think about it. Can that still be courage?

Pride and shame, she thought. Both enemies of a long life. He needs some ice in his blood, to see more clearly.

the hesitation that hovers like raven’s wings over impending battle, when the possibility of death looks you in the eye. Fear can be ice or fire in the veins, freezing the body or setting a blaze within it.

It is a hard thing to fight in the shield wall, where death is closer than a lover and the world condenses to the steel-fisted warrior before you: a place of snarling fury and gut-churning fear, of blood and shite and pain.