The Heroes (First Law World #5)

by Joe Abercrombie

“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes” Bertolt Brecht

Strange thing, that–the fewer years you have to lose the more you fear the losing of ’em. Maybe a man just gets a stock of courage when he’s born, and wears it down with each scrape he gets into.

But fear’s a healthy thing, long as it makes you think.

Maybe there are only so many faces in the world. You get old enough, you start seeing ’em used again.

Nothing like the threat of sudden death for killing a romantic mood.

An army is an instrument of government. It must be used in such a way that it furthers the interests of government. Otherwise what use is it? Only an extremely costly machine for… minting medals.”

‘In war it’s the winning counts. The rest is for fools to sing about.’

Savour the little moments, son, that’s my advice. They’re what life is. All the things that happen while you’re waiting for something else.

When you’re planning what to do, always think of doing nothing first, see where that gets you.

“Before you make a man into mud,” his father had told him afterwards in his disappointed voice, “make sure he’s no use to you alive. Some men will smash a thing just because they can. They’re too stupid to see that nothing shows more power than mercy.”

It always catches people by surprise, the moment of their death, even when they should see it coming. They always think they’re special, somehow expect a reprieve. But no one’s special.

“A man should always be armed. If only for the feel of it.” “An unarmed man is like an unroofed house,” muttered Yon. “They’ll both end up leaking,” Brack finished for him.

Mad fear and mad courage are two leaves on one nettle all right, and you wouldn’t want to grab a hold of either one.

“War is terrible, isn’t it?” “It blights the landscape, throttles commerce and industry, kills the innocent and rewards the guilty, thrusts honest men into poverty and lines the pockets of profiteers, and in the end produces nothing but corpses, monuments and tall tales.”

You can say things at a grave would get you laughed out of a tavern, and be treated like you’re brimming over with wisdom.

Strange, to lock men up for thieving when the whole army lived on robbery. To dangle men for murder when they were all at the business of killing. What makes a crime in a time when men take what they please from who they please?

There aren’t many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in a war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they’ll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There’s no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.”

I’ve sat on the Closed Council, at the very heart of government, and I can tell you power is a bloody mirage. The closer you seem to get the further away it is. So many demands to balance.

There really is no point heaping scorn on my subordinates. If a person is worthy of contempt, they’ll bury themselves soon enough without help.”

Calder didn’t like a silent man. A boastful man like Golden, an angry man like Tenways, even a savage man like Black Dow, they give you something to work with. A quiet man like Ironhead gives nothing. Especially in the dark, where Calder couldn’t even guess at his thoughts.

“You can’t say that civilisation don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way” Will Rogers

“This is the thing about war. Forces men to do new things with what they have. Forces them to think new ways. No war, no progress.”

That’s what war does. Strips people and places of their identities and turns them into enemies in a line, positions to be taken, resources to be foraged. Anonymous things that can be carelessly crushed, and stolen, and burned without guilt.

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter. So when you talk, bring your sword.’

“It’s not easy, is it? Being a great man’s son. You’d have thought it would come with all kinds of advantages–with borrowed admiration, and respect. But it’s only as easy as it is for the seeds of a great tree, trying to grow in its choking shadow. Not many make it to the sunlight for themselves.”

Dying in your sleep is a long stretch better’n dying with steel in your guts, whatever the songs say.”

I am like a jilted lover too cowardly to move on, clinging tremble-lipped to the last feeble mementoes of the cad who abandoned her. Except sadder, and uglier, and with a higher voice. And I kill people for a hobby.

“The path of progress is ever a crooked one.”

What did it feel like when the arrow went in you? Deep into your flesh? In your neck. In your chest. In your fruits. Or a blade? All that sharp metal, and a body so soft. What did it feel like to have a leg cut off? How much could something hurt? All the time he’d spent dreaming of battle, but somehow he’d never thought of it before.

People often supposed that a lord marshal wielded supreme power on the battlefield, even beyond an emperor in his throne room. They did not appreciate the infinite constraints on his authority. The weather, in particular, was prone to ignore orders. Then there was the balance of politics to consider: the whims of the monarch, the mood of the public. There were a galaxy of logistical concerns: difficulties of supply and transport and signalling and discipline, and the larger the army the more staggeringly cumbersome it became. If one managed, by some miracle, to prod this unwieldy mass into a position to actually fight, a headquarters had to be well behind the lines and even with the opportunity to choose a good vantage point a commander could never see everything, if anything. Orders might take half an hour or longer to reach their intended recipients and so were often useless or positively dangerous by the time they got there, if they ever got there.

The higher you climbed up the chain of command, the more links between you and the naked steel, the more imperfect the communication became. The more men’s cowardice, rashness, incompetence or, worst of all, good intentions might twist your purposes. The more chance could play a hand, and chance rarely played well.

An army is made of details the way a house is made of bricks. One brick carelessly laid and the whole is compromised.

The general who waited to make a decision until he knew everything he needed to would never make one, and if he did it would be far too late.

Sloppy officers meant sloppy men, and sloppy soldiering meant defeat. Rules saved lives at times like these.

Anyway, it seems to me a man can do an awful lot of evil in no time at all. Swing of a blade is all it takes. Doing good needs time. And all manner of complicated efforts. Most men don’t have the patience for it.