Daggerspell Quotes

“Still feel sick?” Cullyn said.
“I don’t. I didn’t think blood would smell like that.”
“Well, it does, and it runs like that, too. Why do you think I didn’t want you riding with us?”
“Did you know someone would get killed?”
“I was hoping I could stop it, but I was ready for it. I always am, because I have to be. I truly did think those lads would break sooner than they did, you see, but there was one young wolf in the pack of rabbits. Poor bastard. That’s what he gets for his honor.”
“Da? Are you sorry for him?”
“I am. I’ll tell you something, my sweet, that no other man in Deverry would admit: I’m sorry for every man I ever killed, somewhere deep in my heart. But it was his Wyrd, and there’s nothing a man can do about his own Wyrd, much less someone else’s. Someday my own Wyrd will take me, and I’ve no doubt it’ll be the same one I’ve brought to many a man. It’s like a bargain with the gods. Every warrior makes it. Do you understand?”
“Sort of. Your life for theirs, you mean?”
“Just that. There’s nothing else a man can do.”
Jill began to feel better. Thinking of it as Wyrd made it seem clean again.
“It’s the only honor left to me, my bargain with my Wyrd,” Cullyn went on. “I told you once, never dishonor yourself. If ever you’re tempted to do the slightest bit of a dishonorable thing, you remember your father, and what one dishonor brought him—the long road and shame in the eyes of every honest man.”
“But wasn’t it your Wyrd to have the dagger?”
“It wasn’t.” Cullyn allowed himself a brief smile. “A man can’t make his Wyrd better, but it’s in his hands to make it worse.”
― Katharine Kerr