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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.
Maybe there are only so many faces in the world. You get old enough, you start seeing ’em used again.
Following the universal law that the most frustrating thing will always happen, no matter how unlikely,
the maxim that men always hate in others what is most hateful in themselves.
But then in Craw’s experience, and he’d plenty, wars were made from ninety-nine parts boredom, usually in the cold and damp, hungry and ill, often hauling a great weight of metal uphill, to one part arse-opening terror.
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.
He’d come for men, and swords, and cold hearts ready to do treachery. But he’d long ago learned that most men love nothing better than to be listened to. Especially powerful men.
About what Calder had expected, but still a disappointment. However many life gives you, each new one still stings.
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.”
That’s what it is to be a hero. Everyone wants a little bit of you.”
“Well, true. There’s two sides to every coin, but there’s my very point. People like simple stories.” Craw frowned at the pink marks down the edges of his nails. “But people ain’t simple.”
A good leader can’t dwell on the choices he’s made, Threetrees used to tell him, and a good leader can’t help dwelling on ’em.
What is love anyway, but finding someone who suits you? Someone who makes up for your shortcomings? Someone you can work with. Work on.
Perhaps that was the moment you grew up, when you learned your parents were just as fallible as everyone else.
It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.
Hatred of the enemy was no qualification for command, however. Quite the reverse.
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.
Two lads, probably just reached fighting age, were watching. Laughing at how stupid the sheep were, not to guess what was happening behind those hides. They didn’t see that they were in the pen, and behind a screen of songs and stories and young men’s dreams, war was waiting, soaked to the armpits and not caring. Craw saw it all well enough. So why was he still sitting meek in his pen? Might be old sheep can’t jump new fences either.
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?
Long years in the military had given him a razor-keen sense of when he was about to get fucked, and he was having a painful premonition right now.
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.”
Agrick never saw Union men in numbers before, and they all looked the same, like copies o’ one man with the same armour, the same jackets, the same weapons. It was like killing one man over and over. Hardly like killing real people at all.
If victory makes men brave, defeat renders them cowards.
Defeat, it seems, brings out the best in some men.
It’s amazing how well the most pathetic flattery can work. On enormously vain people especially.
“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.” He leaned back on one elbow. “War, d’you see, is like the plough that keeps the earth rich, like the fire that clears the fields, like—” “The shit that makes the flowers grow?” asked Wonderful.
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. War is hell, and all that. But full of opportunities.
“What makes a man a hero?” he asked the wet air. “Big deeds? Big name? Tall glory and tall songs? No. Standing by your crew, I reckon.”
Amazing how quickly the unbearable becomes banal.
Those sorts of details had always upset him. An army is made of details the way a house is made of bricks. One brick carelessly laid and the whole is compromised.
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.
“A man’s worst enemies are his own ambitions,”
That’s the problem with mistakes. You can make ’em in an instant. Years upon years spent tiptoeing about like a fool, then you take your eye away for a moment and… Bang.
Always do the right thing sounds an easy rule to stick to. But when’s the right thing the wrong thing? That’s the question.
His father used to tell him it’s easy to see the enemy one of two ways. As some implacable, terrifying, unstoppable force that can only be feared and never understood. Or some block of wood that doesn’t think, doesn’t move, a dumb target to shoot your plans at. But the enemy is neither one. Imagine he’s you, that he’s no more and no less of a fool, or a coward, or a hero than you are. If you can imagine that, you won’t go too far wrong. The enemy is just a set of men. That’s the realisation that makes war easy. And the one that makes it hard.
“Patience is as fearsome a weapon as rage. More so, in fact, ’cause fewer men have it.”
Hardly seemed possible that Calder’s father had earned his great reputation like this. But maybe that’s how the world works. Some men are made for doing violence. Some are meant for planning it. Then there are a special few whose talent is for taking the credit.
“The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.”
Being in charge can seem like a thing iron-forged, but in the end it’s just an idea everyone agrees to.
War tips everything upside down. Men who are a menace in peacetime become your best hope once the steel starts swinging.
“Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Dow had no real reason to say yes. He’d nothing to win. But sometimes it’s more about how it looks than how it is.
Seemed Dow was intent on proving himself the better wit as well as the better fighter, and it was no fairer a contest. Winners always get the louder laughs and, for once, Calder was out of jokes.
“A good liar tells as much truth as he can. That way you never know what you’re getting.”
