Warriors from their cradle

Speedy had said that of all the countless Galla tribes, the Wollos were the pick, and I could believe him and thank God they were Theodore’s sworn enemies, for if they’d opposed us I doubt if one of Napier’s army would ever have got back to the coast. They were warriors from their cradles, expert fighters, splendid horseman, and would rather cut throats than eat dinner.


Flashman on the March, p.145, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Team, driver and all

Half a dozen fugitives had the same notion, and one, a sergeant gunner, was half-aboard the beast. “Mine, damn you!” roars he, “She can’t take two!”
       “Right you are, my son,” says I, and knocked him flying. I got a limb across that heaving bare back — and that’s all I ever needed. Thank God I’ve never seen the mount I couldn’t master; I wound my hands into the mane, dug in my heels, and went head down for the ravine, just as the gun I had lately left went careering into it — team, driver and all.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.279, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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In my seventieth year

Racing’s well enough when you’re young and riding yourself, but now that I was in my seventieth year and disinclined to back anything more mettlesome than an armchair,* I found it quite as interesting as a sermon in Gaelic.

* a docile horse


Flashman and the Tiger, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, racing.

An ornery lot

“Know anythin’ about Hungary?”
      I understood it was the biggest state in the empire bar Austria itself, and that the natives were an ornery lot, but fine horseman.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A word on tweed coats

…he had that manly, open-air reek about him that I can’t stomach, what with his tweed coat (I’ll bet he rubbed his horse down with it) and sporting cap; not my style at all.

Flashman's Lady, p.15, Pan edition, 1979.

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A good horseman?

I’m not justifying myself, either for torturing him or killing him, for I don’t need to. Both had to be done – but I’m honest enough to admit I enjoyed doing both. He was a good horseman though.

Royal Flash, p.185, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

Ride

I am one of those who rode as soon as he walked - indeed, horsemanship and my trick of picking up foreign tongues have been the only things in which you could say I was born gifted, and very useful they have been.



Flashman, p. 16, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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