" Do you know who wins battles, boy?”
“We do, Father.”
“The side that is least drunk,” he said, and then, after a pause, “but it helps to be drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because a shield wall is an awful place.” He gazed into the fire. “I have been in six shield walls,” he went on, “and prayed every time it would be the last. "

― Bernard Cornwell , The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)