They rode armed for war, curved swords at their side and the thick horn-and-sinew bows of mounted archers in cases at their knees. - S. M. Stirling

They’re starting to live a little more like human beings and a little less like mad beasts. The problem is that men are more dangerous than beasts. And they’re still a lot closer to vicious mad beasts than to real human beings, like my friends here.

The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that pricked at his eyes. Without that tapestry of colour and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.

He'd been fighting in the cause of civilization, and his stomach reminded him that he deserved some of its fruits.