“I echo like a mynah, that’s why.”

“And, echoing Jerott, ‘So why in hell have you come?’ Philippa’s gaze, bright and owlish and obstinate, held his to the end. ‘To look after the baby,’ she answered. And disconcertingly, after a second’s blank pause, Francis Crawford flung back his damp head and laughed.”

“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.”

“Oh, well. Everyone else has suave, cosmopolitan sheep: why not us? The Millers at Hepple have a ewe that’s been to Kelso three times, and they’ve never been farther than Ford in their lives.” Kate peered absently into the farm pond, and clucked again. “Thoughtless creatures. They’ve forgotten the fish.”

“You have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?''Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said.'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.''I resist because it is no use resisting,' Thorfinn said. 'Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me.”

“Perfectly prepared to be an eavesdropper but unwilling to look like one, Philippa backed quickly towards the door and collided, hard, with an unseen person striding forward equally fast into the room. There was a hiss, more than echoed by herself as the breath was struck from her body. Then two cool, friendly hands held and steadied her, one on her shoulder and one on her flat waist, and a low voice said, ‘Admirable Philippa. I always enter my battlefields in reverse, too. But my own battlefields, my little friend. Not other people’s.”

“Don't you know, even yet, why I came back to Orkney?" Rognvald said. Than Thorfinn looked up. Rognvald's gaze, waiting for his, took and sustained it. Thorfinn did not look away, but his face held no expression.Rognvald said "I am the dog at your heel. Everything I have ever done has been an attempt to be like Thorfinn.”