The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised forever. We pretend we want to be there, and when the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird’s wing beating, the world seems unreal.

— Bernard Cornwell

The sword was called Kaledvoulc'h, which means hard lightning, though Migraine prefers to call it Excalibur, and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his long sword carried. Nor, did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days, and he would not answer. “What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived, and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

— Bernard Cornwell

The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odd the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride. The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him. It’s the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die they said, but reputation does not die. What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness, and success. And why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I’ll see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church with bare feet and prostrating himself in-front the alter, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord. They should fear his displeasure and fear his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched North because my pride was endangered.

— Bernard Cornwell

The wheel of fortune that had once raised her, so high had taken her into the utter depths.

— Bernard Cornwell

Thirty paces, twenty, and you can see the eyes of the men who will try to kill you, and see the spear-blades, and the instinct is to stop, to straighten the shields. We cringe from battle, fear claws at us, time seems to stop, there is silence though a thousand men shout, and at that moment, when terror savages the heart like a trapped beast, you must hurl yourself into the horror. Because the enemy feels the same. And you have come to kill him. You are the beast from his nightmares.

— Bernard Cornwell

This isn't just a war over land, it's a war about God. And Alfred...is Christ's servant...

— Bernard Cornwell

Together we would make reputation, we would have men in halls across Britain telling the story of our exploit. Or of our deaths. They were friends, they were oath-men, they were young, they were warriors, and with such men it might be possible to storm the gates of Asgard itself.

— Bernard Cornwell

...victory does not come to men who listen to their fears.

— Bernard Cornwell

We all suffer from dreams.

— Bernard Cornwell

We should know who they are," I said, "before we kill them. That's just being polite.

— Bernard Cornwell