Oh, the madness of battle! We fear it, we celebrate it, the poets sing of it, and when it fills the blood like fire it is a real madness. It is joy! All the terror is swept away, a man feels he could live forever, he sees the enemy retreating, knows he himself is invincible, that even the gods would shrink from his blade and his bloodied shield. And I was still keening that mad song, the battle song of slaughter, the sound that blotted out the screams of dying men and the crying of the wounded. It is fear, of course, that feeds the battle madness, the release of fear into savagery. You win in the shield wall by being more savage than your enemy, by turning his savagery back into fear.

— Bernard Cornwell

Poor Other. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That's why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There's not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer and thank the Gods it's them and not us.

— Bernard Cornwell

Prisoners!" Final shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive.

— Bernard Cornwell

Serpent-Breath was famous... Wasp-Sting, short and lethal.

— Bernard Cornwell

So a good man can be a bad Christian?"" I suppose so."" Then a bad man," I said, "can be a good Christian?

— Bernard Cornwell

Some had hurled spears first. Those spears thumped into our shields, making them unwieldy, but it hardly mattered. The leading Danes tripped on the hidden timbers and the men behind pushed the falling men forward. I kicked one in the face, feeling my iron-reinforced boot crush bone. Danes were sprawling at our feet while others tried to get past their fallen comrades to reach our line, and we were killing. Two men succeeded in reaching us, despite the smoking barricade, and one of those two feel to Wasp-Sting coming up from beneath his shield-rim. He had been swinging an ax that the man behind me caught on his shield and the Dane was still holding the war ax's shaft as I saw his eyes widen, saw the snarl of his mouth turn to agony as I saw his eyes widen, saw the snarl of his mouth turn to agony as I twisted the blade, ripping it upward, and as Cedric, beside me, chopped his own ax down. The man with the crushed face was holding my ankle and I stabbed at him as the blood spray from Cedric's ax blinded me. The whimpering man at my feet tried to crawl away, but Final stabbed his sword into his thigh, then stabbed again. A Dane had hooked up his ax over the top rim of my shield and hauled it down to expose my body to a spear-thrust, but the ax rolled off the circular shield and the spear was deflected upward, and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward again, felt her bite, twisted her, and Final was keening his mad Irish song as he added his own blade to the slaughter. “Keep the shields touching!” I shouted at my men.

— Bernard Cornwell

So we rode through a broken gate in a broken wall into a broken town, and it was dusk, and the day's rain had finally lifted, and a shaft of red sunlight came from beneath the western clouds as we entered the ruined town. We rode straight into the light of that swollen sun which reflected from my helm that had the silver wolf on its crest, and it shone from my mail coat and from my arm rings and from the hilts of my two swords, and someone shouted that I was the king. I rode Wittier, who tossed his great head and pawed at the ground, and I was dressed in my shining war glory.

— Bernard Cornwell

That joy. That madness. The gods must feel this way every moment of every day. It is as if the world slows. You see the attacker, you see him shouting, though you hear nothing, and you know what he will do, and all his movements are so slow and yours are so quick, and at that moment you can do no wrong, and you will live forever, and your name will be blazoned across the heavens in a glory of white fire because you are the god of battle.

— Bernard Cornwell

The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.

— Bernard Cornwell

The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

— Bernard Cornwell