Hild Quotes

“Unknowns worried her.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Barely ten years ago yet more than half her lifetime, it seemed another world.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Refusal is the path to ravagement and ruin, the ripping of Rheged from all remembrance, and the weeping and wailing of her people.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Rhoedd is a good king with a bitter choice. We do him what kindness we can.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“When they could, they rode along the valley on the ancient track that the redcrests had widened and strengthened and laid with stone.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Now the world was sharp and clear. She felt everything: saw it, smelt it, heard it, every blackbird startled by the unexpected riders; the creak of the leather beneath her thighs; Flýte’s muscles sliding under her cream coat, the charcoal mane standing stiff, and down rising behind her to her right. Now colour tinted the world, faint at first, but fuming and steadying like her place in it.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Her bones felt filled with air and her head began to hum.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She turned, grinned at Aldnoth with the reckless joy of someone who has cast the last die.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She floated in a silent world, her thoughts showing until around her men and horses, golden in the morning light, moved like flies caught in honey.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Her mind was blank, a piece of wood floating on a great dark lake of exhaustion. She must float a little longer.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“They told the folk of her power, her cunning, her uncanny luck.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She’s powerful luck and it rubs off on those around her.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She had a headache, and wanted a dip of cold, clear water to wash the foul taste of that ancient mead from her mouth.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Kings die. With a sword in their hand if they’re lucky and a sword at their neck if they’re not.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“I worry I’ll do it wrong. Make the wrong choice-the wrong guess, the wrong decision at the wrong time.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Be a person. Behave as a person would.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She wanted the locals to know who was saving them.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“They were her people. They held common cause. Each held the others’ lives in their hands.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“We are the people of the north. We will wrap like light around the darkness that is Cadwallon Bradawc and we will burn it from the land.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Even the sky sees you, Cadwallon Bradawc! The moon sees you, the sun sees you. They have come together; and we have come together for you! We come to burn out your heart!”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Speed is our friend and weight our enemy.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“They needed to believe. They needed to believe they were on the winning side, that they knelt to the winning god.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“It should have been a nightmare ride two leagues uphill into the wild dark and slashing rain, with lightning crackling around them, but Hild’s bones fizzled and her heart sang.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She was in the world but not wholly of it, as though someone had thinned the skin between this earth and the next.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She imagined the greyish-white eggs cracking and chicks opening bright pink mouths, newly alive in the world while all around them bodies rotted in the sun.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“This was what it was like to think as a king: to make one throw to win three gains.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“The roar of voices and music from the hall hit her like an enemy charge as she stepped from her apartments.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“She was Hild. Herself. And she would not be threatened.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“Let them look. Let them see her bare arms and her diadem, let them see her strength, her wealth, and her power: Hild Yffing, king maker and king breaker.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“When she felt the hall balanced on the edge of standing and roaring her name, she sat.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood