The Shadow of the Gods Quotes

“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Death is a part of life.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Pride and shame, she thought. Both enemies of a long life. He needs some ice in his blood, to see more clearly.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Hate?” Thorkel said, raising an eyebrow, onions stuck in his beard. “Hate does no one any good,” he shrugged. “Sometimes killing has to be done, but do not do it with hate in your heart. It will eat at you, like maggots laid beneath the skin.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“When Gods go to war, it is no small thing.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“We are the Bloodsworn, closer than kin. A brotherhood, a sisterhood: we live and die together.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“I am blood. I am death, I am vengeance,” she said, her voice flat, empty.
Then she wiped the seax clean and slipped it into her belt, finally placing timber
and stone on to the barrow, sealing Thorkel inside. She stooped, lifted her sack
and picked up her spear, then strode out through the gateway.
With a hiss of wings Vesli flew around her, hovered over her.
“Vesli come with you, help mistress get Breca back,” the tennúr said.
“No,” Orka said. “Death is my only companion. Stay and help Spert.”
Vesli looked at the two seaxes that had slain Thorkel, thrust inside Orka’s
belt.
“What are you going to do with them, mistress?” the tennúr asked.
Orka looked out, over the sloping hills and down to Fellur village, a smear far
below.
“I’m going to find the owner of these blades, and give them back to him,”
Orka snarled.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“It is a dark world, and dark deeds rule it, drag us down a white-foamed river we cannot resist.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Why destroy something that someone cared enough to build?” Breca said.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“I make a choice each and every day... I think on what I have. On what is before me. And they make y heart swell and my head giddy. There is no room left for any dwelling on the past.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“My children,” Lik-Rifa growled, her voice like a mountain slide, like a
summer storm fractured with lightning, rumbling into the distance. A tremor
passed through her, from snout to tail, and then her shape was shimmering,
twisting and coiling like mist, shifting and changing, contracting, shrinking, until
a woman stood before Ilska and her kin. She was tall, taller than any man, at
least as big as the bull troll Elvar had slain on Iskalt Island. Her body was lean
and striated, skin pale and raw and scabbed, weeping pus. Blood oozed from
wounds. She was clothed in a tunic of grey, red-woven at the neck and hem, a
belt studded with gold about her waist and a dark cloak billowing about her like
wings. Her hair, black as jet, streaked with silver, was pulled back tightly, braids
woven into it. She had a sharply beautiful face. Red coals glowed in her eyes.
“What has become of my world, my children, my warbands?” she said, her
voice hard as the north wind, a tremor shivering through it. She looked around at
the battle-plain, the shapes of the long-dead become part of the landscape. Her
red eyes flickered to Ilska.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“My son, if you are here, I will find you. And anyone who stands in my way
will wish they hadn’t.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“If I have learned anything from my travels,” Agnar said, “it is that there is
much in this world that I do not know or understand. Just because I have not
seen a thing does not mean it is not out there.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“There was wealth to be had in death-dealing.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“There were more dead in the courtyard, piled deeper around the steps to the
hall, bodies twisted together, hacked and mutilated. And on the steps in the midst
of it all sat a woman. She was gore-drenched, red with blood from her head to
her boots, a long-axe lying across her lap. An ugly creature was perched upon
her shoulder, with a nasty-looking sting on its tail, and another vaesen sat on the
steps before the woman. It was small, with sharp claws and a half-spear in its
tiny, slim-fingered hand. A tennúr. It had a mound of what looked like bloodcovered nuts piled at its feet and was crunching on one of them as it looked at
Varg. A shiver of revulsion passed through Varg as he realised they weren’t
nuts: they were human teeth. And he didn’t like the way the tennúr’s gaze fixed
for a long moment upon his own mouth. The two vaesen regarded Glornir and
the Bloodsworn with suspicious, violent eyes.
Sitting around the woman’s legs were children, maybe twelve or fifteen of
them. They were the only things in the area not spattered in blood. They didn’t
seem to be scared of the woman, which Varg found strange, as his blood was
tingling, and he felt the ripples of fear and danger pulsing off her. If he had
hackles like Edel’s wolfhounds, they would have been standing stiff and straight.
Ahead of him Varg heard Glornir gasp a breath.
The woman looked up at them as they approached, her eyes fixing on
Glornir. Varg saw recognition dawn in them.
“He’s not here,” the woman said, shaking her head, “he’s not here.” The pain
in her voice was palpable. Tears had streaked clean lines through the blood and
gore and fragments of bone that were thick on her cheeks.
Glornir reined in his horse and slipped from his saddle, then walked a few
steps towards her and stopped.
“Orka Skullsplitter,” he whispered.
The woman stood.
“My brother?” Glornir asked.
“They killed him and took my son,” she said, fresh tears rolling down her
cheeks.
Glornir walked up to her and spread his arms wide, pulling her into an
embrace.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Better a hard truth than a soft lie,”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“I am blood. I am death, I am vengeance,” she said, her voice flat, empty.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway." - Ortha | Page 139”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“She was not
wearing a brynja coat of mail now, just a plain woollen tunic belted with a strip
of tablet-woven wool, but something about her, the way she walked, the way her
eyes fixed on him like a predatory hawk: she looked… dangerous.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Death is a part of life,” Orka whispered into her son’s ear.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Come on, brother, there’s no lamb for the lazy wolf,”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Let’s pick up the pace. I don’t want my prize ending up in a troll’s belly”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“You squeak like a wire-trapped ferret,” Virk said, “and as you cannot even find your nose to wipe it, how are you capable of finding stolen children, murderers and thieves?”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Stop staring like a virgin in a brothel”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“You have fled, weasel-turd”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“I am a hypocrite, you see. Because a mother’s love is a powerful thing. An instinct like no other. I would let the world drown in blood if it would mean my Bjarn was safe and back in my arms again.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“I will die before I wear the thrall’s collar,” Uspa said. He eyes flickered to Kráka. “I mean you no insult, sister. Those of the Tainted who wear the collar, they still cling to life. It is part of being human. Survival. To bear hardship and trial, in the hope of it ending. But I do not care for my life. I care for my husband, whom I have lost, and I care for my son, who is taken. If you put the thrall-collar on me, then my life would be over, for I would never see my son again.” She shrugged. “That is no choice to me: better death. And you saw what I did to Ilska’s warriors. Do not doubt that I could take my own life, if I set my will to it.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“A wolf cannot become a lamb.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods

“Everything is a choice, her father had said to her once. Truth or lie, fight or flight, love or hate.”
― John Gwynne, The Shadow of the Gods