Your honor blinds you, Tempus, to what's right and wrong these days.

Sacred Bands and elite squadrons aren't what the mercenaries' guild is about. Field them at your peril.

You three have done quite enough today: all of you and your feckless, treacherous god.

Then what difference does human striving make: mortal struggle, valor, pain? If you live, then live for the test of spirit, for the celebration of the heart. Live to fight on other days. Lose your beloveds one by one. And remember. Exalt the kiss of friend and horse and wind and sun, which venality cannot cheapen nor stupidity belittle.

Keep your enemies at a distance, your partners close at hand.

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price. And that price is blood. The sound of it in your veins. The pound of it in your head. The volume of it in a human body; the sickness when you've spilled it.

And personally, I've lost my thirst for vengeance.