Excalibur (The Warlord Chronicles #3)

by Bernard Cornwell

Bors had asked that he and his men fight in the centre of our line and I had agreed. I hoped he would die swiftly, cut down by an axe or a spear, for if he was taken alive then his death would be long and horrible.

‘Let me see them,’ Aelle demanded.

How to make you love a character

Some of our women came down to plunder the dead and kill the wounded.

Fucking fuck me

I had heard that horn-call before. I had first heard it when I was a new young spearman and Arthur had ridden to save my life, and now he came again.

Okay? Stop making me cry maybe?

‘but it’s as good a place as any. In fact it’s better than most. Are they all here?’ he asked Bors.

Oh my god. Derfel went from an escort mission to being the commander of THE battle

‘Do you like it, Derfel?’ ‘You’ve become a Christian, Lord?’ I sounded appalled. ‘We’ve all become Christians,’ he said, ‘you as well. Heat a spear blade and burn the cross into your shields.’

‘Did I ever tell you he tried to rape me?’ ‘Yes, Lady,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t true.’ She spoke bleakly. ‘He didn’t just try, he did rape me. Or I told myself it was rape.’

‘At Lugg Vale,’ I said carefully, ‘I killed Valerin.’

She smiled. ‘I think you have been a better friend than I ever knew, Derfel.’

He made a mewing noise as I laid him down and told him that the Otherworld waited for him with roaring fires, good companions and endless mead, and he gripped my left hand hard as I cut his throat with one quick slash of Hywelbane.

Holy fuck

It was Gawain, dead Gawain, his lips and gums shrunken back from his teeth, his nostrils two black slits and his eyeballs empty holes.

Jesus fucking christ

Women, the saint preaches, are God’s punishment on men, and children his punishment on women.

‘I told you,’ I said, ‘it comes later, and I hate stories that tell their endings before their beginnings.’

‘We are not always good Christians.’

I had found an eagle stone, scratched her name on its surface and buried it beside an ash tree.

This is so damn sweet

The trick of a successful life,’ he was now lecturing Taliesin, ‘is to be born with wealthy parents.

‘Fate is inexorable,’

I was too weak, Derfel, too weak. I love Arthur too much.

You, too, as it happens.

but I still felt a pang of hatred for my King. He caught my malevolent gaze and turned his horse away.

And he helped raise that little shit

‘You object to whores?’ Sagramor shouted back. ‘What kind of a warrior are you? A virgin? If you’re so intent on being virtuous then come up here and I’ll geld you.’ That brought laughter and so ended the immediate danger.

‘I broke a thick one,’ he said with a grin, ‘a very thick one, and full of experienced warriors,’

This is probably the best conversation ever

‘First time I’ve ever hugged a naked man,’ the King of the Blackshields said,

the Christians are right, and there is a hell, may he

I love when Derfel forgets he’s a Christian

By that point, Derfel, they were as good as married.’

Why do i like her?

‘You see how close your daughter is to becoming a Queen?’

He told me later that he practised breathing, a thing I would never have thought needed practice, but it meant he could linger on a dying note while he pulsed it to its exquisite end

It was important, he said, to listen to the songs of the common folk, for that taught him what they liked, but he also wanted to sing his own songs to them.

A God is a God, and why should it matter to us which one rules?

as soon as he realized how many souls and how little gold he was saving;

supposedly a certain remedy for barrenness,

I remember that shit from the last book and it still fucks me up

and had produced their first child,

Derfel is a grand papi

fecund,

Word

That erosion of the law was a slow process,

Poor Seren, she never did become a Queen, for she died giving birth to her first child, a daughter who lived only half a day longer than her mother. Thus did the second of my three daughters cross to the Otherworld.

Guinevere kept rooms in her palace just for our use

Cute. I love this friendship

as I had promised Aelle,

but in his character he was Galahad,

I came to know Peredur well and to value him as highly as I have valued any man.

We were, in short, complacent, and fate has ever been the enemy of complacency, and fate, as Merlin always told me, is inexorable.

gralloch

Word

‘Uther, Lord,’ she said. ‘A big man, he is, Lord. Like a God!’

‘I would rather leave,’ I said.

Interesting that Derfel is borderline asking for mercy. I bet he’d grant it to an enemy though. Maybe?

dawned on me that he believed every word he said.

Taliesin ignored the question. Instead he walked to Fergal and the two men embraced and kissed,

CEINWYN WAS SICK.

NO

loved my Ceinwyn so much. Even now, years later, I smile to think of her, and sometimes I wake in the night with tears on my face and know they are due to her.

‘Go!’ Taliesin urged me, ‘go!’

Well he wasted no time becoming my favorite character

‘No,’ I said. ‘If it would cure Ceinwyn,’ she asked, ‘would you lie with me?’ ‘Yes.’

Dope

‘Far, Lord, far. To where the winds spring and the rains begin and the mists are born and no kings rule.’