Andre Norton - Web of the Witch World

“The seneschal has raged like a moor fire into their country. He has wrought better than even we thought he might. But we cannot hold Alizon, seething with hatred for us, any more than we can take Karsten under our rule. We of Estcarp want nothing—save to be left alone in our evening. For we know it is our evening, sliding into a night for which comes no morning. But these would make that a night of flame and death and torment. No man or woman dies willingly, it is in us to strive to hold to life. Thus if we have a night of war before us—” She raised her hand and let it fall again. “Then we shall fight to the end.”

“It need not be so!” There was that in Simon which refused to accept her reading of the future.

She looked from him to Jaelithe, then to Loyse, Ingvald, the Sulcar captains. Then she smiled. “I see that it is in you to will it otherwise. Well, Estcarp may go as Estcarp, but perhaps it is now a field in which we sow strange and different seed, and out of that seed may rise a new fruit. This is a time of change and the Kolder have only precipitated turmoil. Without the Kolder the elements remaining are those we have long known and so we may steady the balance for a space. At least I give you this, comrades-in-arms; this has been a quest of valor such as shall be sung by bards these thousand years until you would not know yourselves as the godlings you shall become. We shall take our victories one by one and have pride in them. And there will be no looking for the last defeat!”

“But there is an end to Kolder!” Ingvald cried out.

“An end to Kolder,” Simon agreed. “There are still battles ahead, as this Wise One has said—victories to be won.”

His hand went out and Jaelithe’s moved to meet it. In this hour he could not visualize defeat—or night for Estcarp. Or anything—save what was his.