Keivan

“Rulf laid a single arrow beside the body, and Koll reckoned he was struggling to keep back tears. ‘From nothing, to nothing,’ he croaked out.
Father Yarvi laid his withered hand on the old helmsman’s arm. ‘But what a journey in between.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half a War

“It was a look that gave her a tingle, all right, but not in a good way. In that look she saw her silly bloody hopes as twisted and broken as she’d left that Lowlander’s arm, and it was no one’s fault but her own. She shouldn’t have let herself hope, but hopes are like weeds: however often you root them out they keep on springing up.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World

“his mind probed that one word: lost . Strange that a single syllable, such a small sound, could bear so many meanings. Lost: it might indicate a person who, journeying through a dark wood, had stumbled from the path; it could point to a defeat, either in battle, with thousands dead, or on a game board, the stones lying in some final, silent, inevitable configuration; or it could mean, simply, something gone—gone only for the moment, or utterly, beyond all retrieval.”
― Brian Staveley, The Last Mortal Bond

“Brand stared in sick disbelief. He’d been sure among all those lads someone would speak, for they were honest enough. Or Hunnan would tell his part in it, for he was a respected master-at-arms. The king or the queen would draw out the truth, for they were wise and righteous. The gods wouldn’t allow such an injustice to pass. Someone would do something. Maybe, like him, they were all waiting for someone else to put things right.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World