M.C. Scott Quotes

#1. A man who had the legions of the east marching at his back could be bred by a donkey on a mule and the senate would have no choice but to accept him.

M.C. Scott

#2. The mare on which the traitor had been seated at the time of his death was, obviously, no longer considered the best horse in Parthia. It was amazing that she had not been served as stew at one of the banquets.

M.C. Scott

#3. At this moment,' I said, 'I think you will be surprised at what he will allow. Our centurion has just discovered what he lives for, and it is this.

M.C. Scott

#4. What of honour? What of courage? What of all the things that bind the legions together?' He gave a shrug and a nod together, and a faint grin that was all the old Juvens; wild, erratic, carefree. His tilted palm said, 'What of them? Life is too precious.

M.C. Scott

#5. Given of the god,
Given to the god,
Taken by the god in valour, honour and glory.
May you journey safely to your destination.

M.C. Scott

#6. But, new soldier that I was, I understood at last what Cadus had been trying to tell me all along: that life and love and rank were not enough. To be whole in myself, I needed honour, and I had lost it, and could see no way to get it back.

M.C. Scott

#7. Demalion, we're alive.' Pantera's voice was unusually clipped, as if his patience had finally run to an end. 'If we were trying to get ourselves killed, we three would have managed it, I think. Two officers of the Fifth and a spy trained by Seneca could manage that much at least.

M.C. Scott

#8. In the centre of our line, eighty paces to my left, I felt Cadus raise his hand; I did not need to look.
'Sound,' he said. That was all.

M.C. Scott

#9. The dying go so swiftly at the end. Always the speed of their leaving catches me unawares; so much left to say, to promise, to pray for.

M.C. Scott

#10. He is wounded, but he is still the Leopard, still dangerous. His eyes look through you, until they don't. That's when he'll kill you.

M.C. Scott

#11. Harder! Harder! Strike at it, for the gods' sake! It's a Parthian, not your grandmother! I swear if you don't put some effort into - What?

M.C. Scott

#12. I nursed that flame as if it were my only son, and all round the ram nineteen other men did likewise.

M.C. Scott

#13. Cadus spoke the local Greek better than I did; they stretch the vowels here, and round them off, so that words that look the same on the written page sound as if they are spoken by a goat with catarrh.

M.C. Scott

#14. We broke camp together and set off in our opposite directions: we of the XIIth and our allies marched east, towards the rising sun, combat and honour; the IVth went west, to the setting sun, to ignominy and a wealth of digging. We sang as we marched. They did not.

M.C. Scott

#15. My lady, it is the lady empress Sextilia Augusta, mother to - ' 'She knows to whom I am mother. The entire world knows to whom I am mother. The entire world shares my shame.' The empress's voice was sharp

M.C. Scott

#16. Three old men with moon-silver hair and slow, ponderous movement took him in their arms and laid him on a marble slab and set silver coins on his eyes and swung incense over him, murmuring as
priests do to fill what might otherwise be a god-sent silence.

M.C. Scott