“Yelling a battle cry—more to motivate himself than frighten his foes—Lukel grabbed the table leg and swung it at a soldier. The wood bounced off the man's helmet, but the blow was powerful enough to daze him, so Lukel followed it with a solid blow to the face. The soldier dropped and Lukel grabbed his weapon.Now he had a sword. He only wished he knew how to use it.”

“Left weaponless, Roran was forced to retreat before the remaining soldier. He stumbled over a corpse, cutting his calf on a sword as he fell, and rolled to avoid a two-handed blow from the soldier, scrabbling frantically in the ankle-deep mud for something, anything he could use as a weapon. A hilt brushed his fingers, and he ripped it from the muck and slashed at the soldier's sword hand, severing his thumb. The man stared dumbly at the glistening stump, then said, "This is what comes from not shielding myself." "Aye," agreed Roran, and beheaded him.”

“An Ax was raised into the smoke filled sky while the surrounding soldiers pinned him down and stood on his hands. It took more than a dozen blows to sever each arm just below the elbows. The strangest sensation, he said, was that one minute he could feel his knuckles being ground into the asphalt by the soldier's boot and in the next he watched the man kick his arm away and he felt nothing.”

“To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever.”

“No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling.”

“Each soldier was the living image of the others, but there was one who was a bit different. He had only one leg, for he was the last to be cast and the tin had run out. Still, there he stood, just as steadfast on his one leg as the others on their two; and he is the tin soldier we are going to hear about.”