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2ba1704
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I'm in pain all the time,' I said, 'and if I gave into it then I'd do nothing.
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uhtred
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Bernard Cornwell |
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4c3ef84
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Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that's more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won't it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?
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Bernard Cornwell |
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3490a88
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The first sound was the bowstrings, the snap of five thousand hemp cords being tightened by stressed yew, and that sound was like the devil's harpstrings being plucked. Then there was the arrow sound, the sigh of air over feathers, but multiplied, so that it was like the rushing of a wind. That sound diminished as two clouds of arrows, thick as any flock of starlings, climbed into the gray sky. Hook, reaching for another broadhead, marveled..
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Bernard Cornwell |
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dae7649
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Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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d4bcc7c
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Wyrd bid ful araed
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Bernard Cornwell |
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47afc39
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Senhor Uhtred! - Como sempre, Willibald reagiu a minha provocacao. - Esse peixe - ele apontou o dedo tremulo na direcao dos ossos - foi um dos dois que Nosso Senhor usou para alimentar 5 mil pessoas! - O outro devia ser um peixe incrivelmente grande - respondi. - O que era? Uma baleia?
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Bernard Cornwell |
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b59c52f
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Were the Romans Christians?" I asked him, remembering my curiosity at the Roman farm. "Not always," Ravn said. "They had their own gods once, but they gave them up to become Christians and after that they knew nothing but defeat."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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8763b5a
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So we all die?' "No, no, no! We fight them!' 'How do you fight a dragon?' 'With prayer, boy, with prayer.' 'So we do all die"
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Bernard Cornwell |
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b054094
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We live in a world where the strongest win, and the strongest must expect to be disliked.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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6c76d9a
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Calix meus inebrians.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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c973155
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I had the arrogant confidence of a man born to battle. I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, son of another Uhtred, and we had not held Bebbanburg and its lands by whimpering at altars. We are warriors.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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f050dce
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I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life...
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war
revenge
death
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Bernard Cornwell |
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d40d164
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He sang the song of the sword, keening as he fed his blade, and Rollo, standing thigh-deep in the creek, ax swinging in murderous blows, blocked the enemy's escape. The Frisians, transported from confidence to bowel-loosening fear, began to drop their weapons."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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2368c9c
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To ask another man's blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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44f5b68
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Religion makes strange bedfellows.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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a240b9f
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I shook my head. 'Killing isn't woman's work,' I said. 'Why not?' she asked. 'We give life, can't we take it too?
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Bernard Cornwell |
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7e42cd0
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Wyrd bid ful araed. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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cf61dd7
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But deep under the earth, where the corpse serpent gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, there are three spinners. Three women who make our fate. We might believe we make choices, but in truth our lives are in the spinners' fingers. They make our lives, and destiny is everything. The Danes know that, and even the Christians know it, Wyrd bio ful araed, we Saxons say, fate is inexorable.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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3dc572b
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When rumours fly, when false tales are being told, be the storyteller.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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7ddfe94
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So long as we remember names, so long those people live.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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05e0e10
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Arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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9730176
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When those blades cut, they cause tears that feed the well of Urdr that lies beside the world tree, and the well gives the water that keeps Yggdrasil alive, and if Yggdrasil dies then the world dies, and so the well must be kept filled and for that there must be tears.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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0d4156f
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Pelos ossos de Deus, Tom, o diabo fez um servico ruim quando trepou com sua mae.
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humor
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Bernard Cornwell |
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6a7a6f4
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It is not difficult to be a lord, a jarl, or even a king, but it is difficult to be a leader. Most men want to follow, and what they demand of their leader is prosperity. We are the ring-givers, the gold-givers. We give land, we give silver, we give slaves, but that alone is not enough. They must be led. Leave men standing or sitting for days at a time and they get bored, and bored men make trouble. They must be surprised and challenged, gi..
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Bernard Cornwell |
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ecec872
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I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother's stories of Cuthbert's miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden's worshippers cried much.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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f2c5d70
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We should know who they are," I said, "before we kill them. That's just being polite."
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polite
should
know
kill
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Bernard Cornwell |
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ccec387
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It takes a weak man to prove his strength by striking a woman.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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aab4baf
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Robin Hood's Lament"?' Every archer knew that tune."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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67f8495
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The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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3b0eb44
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Who do you serve?" Lanferelle asked. "Sir John Cornerwailled," Hook said proudly. Lanferelle was pleased. "Sir John! Ah, there's a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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f94c890
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Os bardos cantam sobre o amor e sobre como as mulheres desejam o amor, mas ninguem sabe o que ele e ate que, como uma lanca atirada do escuro, ele acerta.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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f6c53bf
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Fight well," he said distantly, "and remember you are Englishmen!" "Welshmen," someone intervened. Sir Roger visibly flinched at that and then, without another word, led his three men-at-arms from the church."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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7ef450c
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One of the things I can't stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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889624a
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Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live forevermore in the blessed company of the saints. And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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7a437d5
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I had no idea what I was speaking of, but only knew I must sound confident. Fear might work on a man, but confidence fights against fear. Odda
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Bernard Cornwell |
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8b03563
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There is a thing called the blood feud. All societies have them, even the West Saxons have them, despite their vaunted piety. Kill a member of my family and I shall kill one of yours, and so it goes on, generation after generation or until one family is all dead, and Kjartan had just wished a blood feud on himself. I did not know how, I did not know where, I could not know when, but I would revenge Ragnar. I swore it that night.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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36c94de
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No, fate is difficult. Is all ordained? Foreknowledge is not fate, and we may choose our paths, yet fate says we may not choose them. So if fate is real, do we have choice?
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Bernard Cornwell |
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0e18902
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Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?" she asked the table at large in an acid voice. "You want warriors to be courtiers?" Celwin retorted brusquely. "You'd send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don't mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective." He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered."
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Bernard Cornwell |
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7af28ff
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War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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36fe3bc
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I could imagine Cnut sitting there and thinking that I must join him soon, and we would raise a horn of ale together. There is no pain in Valhalla, no sadness, no tears, no broken oaths.
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uhtred
cornwell
the-empty-throne
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Bernard Cornwell |
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4fbba6f
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Someone wise, I forget who, said we must leave our children to fate.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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e8e16ba
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It was funny, Richard Sharpe thought, that there were no vultures in England.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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6ab6f51
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I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurred into the chaos to continue the killing. And that was how I met Ragnar, Ragnar the Fearless, my brother's killer, and the man whose head was supposed to grace a pole on Bebbanburg's ramparts, Earl Ragnar.
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Bernard Cornwell |
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6615d26
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These word-stringers make nothing, grow nothing, kill no enemies, catch no fish, and raise no cattle. They just take silver in exchange for words, which are free anyway. It is a clever trick, but in truth they are about as much use as priests.
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Bernard Cornwell |