Conn Iggulden

“There is a price for all things, my son, for all men. I have merely to find his.”

“Courage cannot be left like bones in a bag. It must be brought out and shown the light again and again, growing stronger each time. If you think it will keep for the times you need it, you are wrong. It is like any other part of your strength. If you ignore it, the bag will be empty when you need it most.”

“There are many who say ‘I believe this,’ but would they hold true to those beliefs if their children were threatened? No. But Genghis would. If you told him you would kill his children, he would tell you to go ahead, but realize that the cost would be infinite, that he would tear down cities and nations and the price would never be paid. He did not lie and his enemies knew it. His word was iron.”

“You obey orders, because if you do not, you cannot expect the same from your men. You are part of the wolf, not the whole wolf. I would have thought you had learned that when you were a boy, but it is not the case. A wolf cannot have more than one head, General, or it tears itself apart.”

“If a man has gold, he lives with the terror that someone will take it away from him, so he builds walls around it. Then everyone knows where the gold is, so they come and take it. That’s the way it always goes, brother. Fools and gold, together.”

“Sometimes, power could change hands as quickly as a knife thrust.”

“I am not you and all my choices have already been made, good and bad.”

“There is a world outside the one we know,” he said softly, “with cultures and races and armies who have never heard of us. Yes, and cities greater than Yenking and Karakorum. To survive, to grow, we must remain strong. We must conquer new lands, so that our army is always fed, always moving. To stop is to die, Chagatai.”

“No worthy goal should come easily, he told himself. Suffering created value.”

“History was more than just stories, he reminded himself as the men walked forward with their burdens. It taught lessons as well.”

“The nation of my father is too strong for a man who cannot command even his own body.”

“Be careful in your life, Tolui. I want you fit and strong for when I come for you.”

“Get up,” she said. “Get up, my lord. If you do not have long, there is still much to do. You must not waste another day, another morning! Take hold of your life with both hands and crush it to you, my lord. You will not have another in this world.”

“He would never understand women, he thought. They were life’s great mystery.”

“The world cannot be full of lead dogs, or the pack would pull itself apart.”

“A man needs to feel a little fear, Tolui, if only to have the pride of conquering it.”

“A brave man could conquer fear, he had learned that, but perhaps only for a time. It was something the young did not understand, the way it could gnaw at a man, the way it came back stronger every time, until you were alone and gasping for breath.”

“If he had learned anything from his father’s fate, it was to win, no matter how you did it. It was not important if someone else was hurt, or killed. If you won, you would be forgiven anything. You could be taken from a stinking ger and forced through the ranks until a thousand men followed your orders as if they came from the khan himself. Blood and talent. The nation was built on both.”

“They had learned that Sorhatani expected the same sort of instant obedience as her husband. She had grown up around men of power and had married into the great khan’s family at a very young age. She knew that men prefer to follow, that it takes an effort of will to lead. She had that will.”

“For the khan, we will take their cities, their women, and their lands. This is the great raid, the farthest strike in the history of the nation of Genghis. We will not be stopped.”