Jordan

“If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“The man had not said anything, but it appeared, from what the monks had said, that he had single handedly held off six routiers in an ambush that had killed their men-at-arms. I was used to men that bragged all day - bragged about the women they bedded, bragged about knife fights in taverns - yet this man didn't even show his weapons. He seldom smiled, and he never, that I saw, displayed temper. He was courteous to every soul he met, ready with a blessing, and he never cursed or blasphemed.

He was like a paladin from the chansons.

I worked very hard to please him.”
― Christian Cameron, The Ill-Made Knight

“I said, 'Then why don't we yield now, and make an end? There would be fewer cities burned and fewer men slain in that way. Why do we go on fighting? Why not merely lie down and let it come? They say it is easier to drown if you don't struggle.'

'For an idea,' Ambrosius said, beginning again to play with the dragon arm ring; but his eyes were smiling in the firelight, and I think that mine smiled back at him. 'Just for an idea, for an ideal, for a dream.'

I said, 'A dream may be the best thing to die for.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset

“Lying sprawled uncouthly at the foot of the Red Dragon where the men had tumbled him down, there was a certain splendor about him still. An old man, an old giant, with bright hairs that shone like gold wires in the gray jut of his beard and the mane of wild hair outflung about his head. I recognized him first by the earl's bracelet twisted about his sword arm, for a spear had taken him between the eyes, but as I looked down more closely into the smashed and blood-pooled face, I recognized the cunning iron-bound mouth, drawn back now in a frozen snarl. I recognized above all, I think the greatness that seemed to cling about him still, an atmosphere of the thing that had made him a giant in more than body; this ancient enemy of Ambrosius's. Hengest, the Jutish adventurer who had grown to be a war lord of the Saxon hordes, lying flung down like a tribute at the foot of the British standard that stirred faintly in the night air above him.

That left the son and the grandson to deal with.

'So-o,' Bedwyr said softly. 'Earl Hengest goes at last to his own Storm Lords again. He should have died on a night of tempest, with the lightning leaping from hill to hill, not on a still summer evening with the scent of hawthorn in the air.'

'He was a royal stag,' I said. 'Thank God he is dead.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset