By The Sword Quotes
"To the six hells with 'proper.' If Father wants this feast to be a success, I have to be in here, not playing the lady."
"Idiots! Kerowyn swore again, this time with an oath her mother would have blanched to hear, but it seemed as if she was the only one with the will or brains to act."
"Leave that be, Perry! That's for after the ceremony, and don't you forget it! You can eat yourself sick on the scraps tomorrow for all I care, but you leave it alone tonight, or more than your knuckles will be hurting, I promise you."
"I'm sorry I can't do much about the service," she continued, keeping an ear cocked for the sounds of the servers returning. "There's only so much stableboys and hire-swords can learn about the server's art in a couple of candlemarks."
"Damn him. —time did make sorrow fade, at least it had for her. Time, and being too busy to breathe."
"Father never really notices anything about me so long as I stay out of sight, his dinner arrives on time, and the Keep doesn't smell like a stable."
"What is wrong with the man? she asked herself in frustration for the thousandth time. I'm doing the best that I can with what he allows me!"
"Why did Mother have to die, anyway? Why should I have been left with all this on my hands?"
"I know you did, Hewerd," she said absently. That seemed to satisfy him. He closed his eyes and retreated into himself.
"I'm the only one left that could follow. If I try to get her back, her uncle won't have an excuse to come after Lordan."
"A spooky enough road for a visit to a witch."
"Maybe she still doesn’t. But that’s a chance I’ll have to take."
"Mother said that Grandmother had offered to build the Keep into something like the Tower, and Father refused, she remembered suddenly. Why? He wasn’t normally that stupid, to refuse help."
"But he loved Mother, she thought, letting Verenna pick her way through the thin underbrush. I know he loved Mother, and not just her lands."
"Books, dear gods, he owns more books than anyone I know."
"If I can just get Grandmother down to the Keep... if she’s got the kind of power everyone seems to think she does."
"Sometimes a crazy old woman is just a crazy old woman."
"Don’t pass up your chance to learn. Look at me—too ignorant to do anything but swing a sword—if it hadn’t been for your mother, I’d probably be living in a bar somewhere, throwing out drunks by night and mopping the floor by day."
"Woman’s Need calls me, as Woman’s Need made me. Her Need will I answer as my maker bade me."
"I made my choices, and I’m going to live or die by them."
"But I can't help but wonder how much Grandmother really knew about it."
"I don't like this. I don't like this at all."
"Stop that, you little idiot," the old woman said in a grating voice from directly behind her. "We're friends. Obviously."
"You can put a hawk in a songbird's cage, but it's still a hawk."
"Why can't I do the same? Why can't I just go?"
"It was amazing how little she owned that she wanted to keep."
"Because you want me to strengthen my arms and shoulders."
"I'm going to be a lot more careful in placing my hits. I just might impress her."
"Freedom from the bower, from boredom, from pretending I was something I wasn't."
"I don't know where Grandmother gets her provisions, but Wendar would kill to find out."
"It's a damned good thing he was an honest and unmalicious man, because if he'd beaten her and told her she deserved it, she'd have believed him."
"Romantic! Dear Goddess—I supposed she'd think of it that way."
"Be careful what you ask for, you may get it."
"The man was a common mere; a little better born than most, but not even close to landed."
"I think he was afraid I’d try and take her away from him."
"I don’t eat babies. I just came here tonight to talk to you."
"You think 'out loud.' Very loud, I might add."
"I'm turning into some kind of inhuman monster, I can’t even respect my father’s memory."
"It is easier to teach two, and having someone else around will keep her on her toes. Competition will be damned good for her, especially if she thinks she’s having to compete for my attention."
"I understand that the boy does have a quick temper, which makes him an easy target for Thanel. I wouldn’t see any lad have to put up with that if I can help it. I don’t like bullies, and Thanel’s the worst kind of bully—a clever one."
"From camp-hygiene to post-rape trauma. And since you worked with the Healers in the Sunhawks, you’re better equipped for that than I am."
"That’s how you tell a merc is dead; he just stops collecting paychecks."
"So she kept a weather eye out, but concentrated on the things that were in her power to deal with."
"If you continue on in your present pattern, you will, if you are lucky, succeed only in getting yourself killed. If not-you may bring down hundreds with you."
"Why should I share my edge with you? You haven’t done a thing to deserve it."
"Because I have to keep myself fed and clothed somehow, your highness."
"We’re not cookies, you know, all cut out of identical dough and baked to an identical brown and sprinkled with sugar so you men can devour us whenever you please."
"Magic, I suppose," Kero replied. "Although ... you know, not that much of it has to be cooked."
"One cook and two helpers could take care of all this and more, and still have time for the helpers to double at light cleaning and laundry," she said.
"I’m not. I took care of the Keep for five years after Mother died, and for most of two years before that," She made a face, and cut a careful bite out of her ham slice. "I hated it. But I learned it anyway."
"If it wasn’t prophetic," Kero asked hesitantly, "What was it?"
"A warning," she said. "This place—seems to trigger things like that."
"Good," she replied. "Let’s build on that." Then she laughed, feeling a burden lifting from her mind.
":It’s about time,: said a sardonic voice in her mind. Humans!:"
"Bloodless warfare, she thought to herself. All the fighting reduced to numbers. Is that how generals see us?"
"Exploiting the enemy’s weakness?" He was getting his breath back faster than she was, and he managed to eel around so that her head was in his lap. "But Kero—I’m not your enemy."
"I like Daren, she thought, rubbing her arms to warm them. He’s clever, he’s intelligent, he’s flexible—he’s not bad in bed, either. He wouldn’t ever hurt me deliberately."
"Hate them all you want, so long as you play them right."
"I think he’ll do a little better knowing Faram wants him."
"In short, it was time for her to leave as well."
"That I’m your equal, and their superior. How good I am."
"In other words, I wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing that I’ve been trained and working at for the past three years."
"I’m not sure what was more surprising—him developing good sense, or me developing a silver tongue."
"I’d kill ‘em for free and dance on the graves after."
"The more I hear about the Karsites, the less I want to do with them."
"Almost seems like if you acted like they do, you’d be in danger of becoming like them."
"Just—responsibility. That’s all I really felt that I can remember. That someone had to take care of the mess, and I was the only one possible."
"Sometimes I go after what I want with such single-mindedness that I frighten myself."
"The first lover is supposed to be such a big thing—but with Daren there didn’t really seem to be more at stake than friendship and—well—the desires of the moment."
"Maybe it’s just that I’ve never really had anyone get close enough that I could honestly say I loved him, except Mother."
"I wonder what it’s about?" Shallan said, trotting along with an ease that reminded Kero of Warrl’s lazy lope."
"We aren’t trained, any of us, in the kind of line fighting there’s going to be."
"Don’t think we’re getting off easy," he said, "I’m deploying half of you as outriders to make sure nobody gets away."
"For only the second time since she’d joined the Skybolts, she dropped her mental shields and searched for a coherent picture among the jangle of thoughts—looking for the person who knew what was going on."
"I could look on the bright side," she said to the mare. "At least we have water. And I got that bath."
"I want home, I want out of here! I want to see the winter quarters, and Shallan, and Tre—I want cooked food and a real bed—I want a bath—I want to sleep without having to wake every few breaths because I think I hear something—"
"The woods seemed empty of everything but birds—of course, another scout, a good one, might not have disturbed them any more than Kero did."
"That scent could disguise the mare’s and make it possible for them to work around the patrol ahead of them without alerting the Karsites’ horses."
"The crushed pine needles gave off a sharp scent that made her pause for a moment."
"A rock outcropping offered little in the way of concealment, but the dusk itself provided that."
"But put white-clad man together with white horse, and even a tired, numb-brained mere knew what that meant."
"It’s my job," she reminded him, and looked up at the sky, critically."
"Damn it, you’re almost out of here! You aren’t an army, you aren’t even in good fighting shape right now, and he isn’t a female, so Need won’t give a fat damn about him."
"Hellfires," she thought, watching some of the "new" ones tie their prisoner "securely."
"But the more she saw, the less palatable the idea of leaving him in their hands became."
"That clinched it, the thought of "home" set up a longing so strong it overwhelmed any other consideration."
"One of the things she’d stolen on her forays after food had been a bar of rough brown soap; harsh with lye, but it would get her clean."
"Coming close to death seems to make life that much more important."
"There’s nothing more dangerous than a bad poet, unless it’s a bad minstrel."
"That meant that the Karsites were convinced their quarry was somewhere ahead of them, and they wouldn’t be looking for them in the rear."
"It was then, as they made love in sun-dappled shade, that Kero realized there was something out of the ordinary in her relationship with this man."
"It certainly hadn’t been hard to fall for him."
"She moved a little bit closer; it was cold down in the hollow, but she wanted spiritual comfort as well as physical."
"Was that enough to make up for the differences between them?"
"But the Karsite patrols on the road below didn’t seem in any mood to indulge his needs."
"You’re not making them get out of the way any faster by fuming."
"She doesn’t care when she gets home—hellfires, she hasn’t even got a home—"
"Looks like she was right, Kero thought with a feeling very like pain."
"She didn’t look back at him, where he was curled up against the back wall of the cave; that would only make it harder to leave."
"Her independence had been dearly bought, and she wasn’t about to give it up now."