The Winter King Quotes
"These are the tales of the land we call Lloegyr, which means the Lost Lands, the country that was once ours but which our enemies now call England."
"It is cold today. The hills are deathly pale and the clouds dark. We shall have snow before nightfall."
"Arthur wore goose feathers on his helmet."
"Sansum says it would be better if so much lambskin were made into shoes."
"I am old now, but Sansum, may God grant him many years yet, is older still so I cannot use my age as an argument to unlock the woodstore."
"All pain is a blessed reminder of our dear Lord’s Passion."
"And there was snow when Arthur’s tale began."
"On a bitter night, when the kingdom lay still and white beneath a waning moon."
"The earth seemed dead and still, as if she had been abandoned by Belenos the Sun God and left to drift in the endless cold void between the worlds."
"But the witchcraft worked, for a child was born alive."
"We children of the Tor were encouraged to throw stones at the monks."
"Morgan was a creature from nightmare, but to Merlin she was a lady fit for his high hall."
"Merlin wanted to call her Vivien, a name dedicated to Manawydan, but Nimue ignored the name and kept her own."
"A kingdom without an heir is a cursed kingdom."
"Merlin’s hall, which lay on the northern horizon."
"Merlin, finding me, had called me a child of Bel."
"The sacred mist is thick, but our task is to spread it."
"It is not the task of Gods to love us. Do you love Druidan’s pigs? Why, in Bel’s name, should a God love us?"
"The Knowledge of Britain is the lore of our ancestors, the gifts of our Gods, the Thirteen Properties of the Thirteen Treasures which, when gathered, will give us back the power to claim our land."
"If Dumnonia falls then we lose our links to Amorica and our brethren beyond the sea."
"Merlin, my Lord King, promises at this moment, upon his soul’s life, that he will take the death-oath to protect your grandchild."
"For what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything."
"The strange priests chanted and intoned in the Greek tongue that meant nothing to either of us."
"A kingdom was being passed to a crippled child and Gundleus, for all his treacherous past, was a famous warrior."
"We held our breath to see whose side Gundleus of Siluria would choose."
"It’s all in the wrists, boy, all in the wrists."
"I’ve suffered two Wounds of Wisdom, the Wound to the Body and the Wound to the Pride."
"Maybe even now, in this smoke-haunted afternoon, the kingdom was dying."
"Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you’ll just weep yourself to death."
"I did not use my sword, for I did not think Hywel’s blade a fit instrument for that night’s purpose."
"The young will often rush in where the wise go steadily."
"Every leader depends on having good men for his reputation."
"So far as I can make out Arthur doesn’t believe in anything, except big horses, and the Gods alone know what earthly use they are."
You may not want tin," Cadwy said forcefully, "but there’s plenty who do. Can’t make bronze without tin.
"The only metal a warrior needs is his sword and the lump of iron at the end of his spear, the rest’s just weight, lad, dead weight."
"That was the first time I realized that the Saxons fought amongst themselves just as we British did."
"Arthur walked in silence until he stood two paces from the captured King. The crowd held its breath."
Arthur doesn’t believe in the Gods," Owain said, "that’s why not. He doesn’t even believe in that milksop God the Christians worship.
"He made a sign of warning with his moon-tipped staff."
"It is war’s last fling before winter locks the land."
"In purgatory, or maybe hell, I know I will meet those dead children."
"Nimue pushed back the hood of her cloak. I smiled because she had a golden eye."
"The Gods must be thanked for good fortune."
"Your head is in the clouds, Derfel, while Lunete is earth-bound. She wants to be rich and you want to be honourable. It won’t mix."
"A dead Christian, she said flatly. ‘They should all be saints.’"
"If I wanted to be happy, Derfel, I’d be down here with you, baking your bread and keeping your bedding clean."
"He has gone now, Derfel, because we are coming into the bad time. Everything good will get bad, everything bad will get worse."
"Arthur is to Merlin what you are to me. Arthur is Merlin’s sword, but neither of us can control you."
"When the Test of Britain comes, Derfel, and it will, none of us will know how strong our sword will prove."
"The Gods are heaping all the throwpieces at once to see how the game will end."
"I heard you’re a good soldier? To fight battles, Derfel, on behalf of people who can’t fight for themselves."
"I hate war. I happen to be good at it, maybe you are too, and that just means we have to use it wisely."
"You see what he’s doing? Pulling down the old! Why? So he can impose his tawdry little superstitions on us. Why can’t he leave the old alone? We"
"Shun epic verse. I speak from experience."
"I always hoped you’d be useful some day."
"Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue!"
"Merlin had come to Dumnonia and suddenly the kingdom’s troubles seemed halved."
"Arthur had not become a warlord by mere kindness."
"Men dream strange dreams when they suffer hardships."
"Things are really not much different from when you left, except that Aelle grows stronger."
"I always knew Aelle would want something more than gold. They’re Saxons! They don’t want peace, they want land!"
"Arthur himself walked with banners flying and his horsemen armoured for combat. We marched in that high style for we wanted to give the local people a new confidence."
"Arthur’s black mare Llamrei was led by Hygwydd, his servant, and with him was a stranger I took to be another servant."
"I want to see his tears! I want to see him pleading as she pleaded with me."
"Without Derfel Cadarn and Galahad of Benoic, there would be no Knowledge of Britain. I would be dead in Benoic and you would all be doomed to slavery under Saxon rule"
"My business is the care of your souls and if I care to drown those souls in misery then you will wish your mothers had never given birth. Fools!"
"She will never be high and she will never be low, but she will be happy. Her soul, Gorfyddyd, is blessed, and if you had the sense of a flea you would be content with that."
"I believe the Gods hate to be bored, so I do my best to amuse them. That way they smile on me."
"The Ring of Eluned, forged in the Otherworld at the beginning of time. Piece of metal really, nothing special."
"If I had nothing better to do then I confess I would help Arthur, because I like him, but fate has decreed that I am an old man, increasingly feeble and possessed of a bladder like a leaking waterskin, and I must therefore husband my waning energies."
"Fate is inexorable, Derfel. If fate means Arthur to win this war then it doesn’t matter if Gorfyddyd masses the armies of the world against him."
"It isn’t enough just to gather the Treasures, of course, there are one or two other rituals that are needed. And who knows if it will all work? No one has ever tried, so far as I know."
"You’re so like Arthur. You think the world is simple, that good is good and bad is bad, that up is up and down is down."
"I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes, and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them."
"Guinevere is a lady, and your soul is mine if you deny it."