I remember the line. I don't remember where it is, but I think it's in either The Great Ordeal of The White Luck Warrior.
I think it's in The Great Ordeal -- I want to say it is in one of the chapter epigraphs, but that might not be accurate.
@WeAreProyas:
I think I've seen this particular (or similar) line of thinking brought up elsewhere on this forum previously, and I think it's a really good guess. As far as I can tell (and I'm not yet past TJE in my re-read, so my memory is rusty) the whatever-they-were-called whose names would later become holy aren't brought up to any
significant extent in TUC, which indicates one of two things:
A) they're referred to as holy among the ordinary Men of the Ordeal, amongst which we really have almost no eyes in the narrative. We follow the Ordeal from two perspectives -- looking down (via commanders and various VIPs like Proyas, Serwa and Sorweel) and in a third person-omniscient kind of way (the "Death came swirling down" narrative voice that covers battles and marches) -- and neither give much insight into the day-to-day, habitual actions of menial Men of the Ordeal. We don't really know what Johnny High Ainon thinks about Proyas' command or about butchering the Scalded or any other detail of his ordinary friends' thoughts and reverences. Given this narrative blindness, it's possible the Herdsmen (which is what I want to say the people we're talking about are called, but I don't have my book with me) are referred to as Holy already by the time the Ordeal reaches Golgotterath.
B) the epigraphs are written shortly-to-long
after the Ordeal's end, which means that people both survived to tell the tale and survived well enough to write stories, poetries and historical accounts about the march to Golgotterath. That means the Herdsmen may not have become holy yet at the point
we have reached in the story, but the endless re-tellings will somehow elevate them later. I'm reluctant to believe the people that will now assemble to fight the No-God's armies are going to be penning a lot of literature in the near future, which leaves the possibility of it having been written much later.