Best Served Cold

by Joe Abercrombie

“I wouldn’t fancy trying to storm the place.” “Don’t pretend you’d have the guts to climb the ladder.” “I wouldn’t fancy telling someone else to storm the place.” “Don’t pretend you’d have the guts to give the orders.” “I wouldn’t fancy watching you tell someone else to storm the place.”

War’s a dark enough trade, I draw the line at politics.

“A man without discipline is no better than a dog. A soldier without discipline is no better than a corpse. Worse, in fact. A corpse is no threat to his comrades.”

‘An animal fights his way to victory—’” “‘A general marches there,’”

fine lies beat tedious truths every time,

“Seems a waste of decent flesh, though. Why not give me a moment with her? A moment’s all it would take.” Prince Ario tittered. “Speed isn’t always something to be proud of.”

“To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike”

One night her father seized Monza by her wrist, and stared at her with bright eyes. “Tomorrow, break the ground in the upper field, or the wheat won’t rise in time. Plant all you can.” He touched her cheek. “It’s not fair that it should fall to you, but your brother is so small. Watch over him.” And he was dead. Benna cried, and cried, but Monza’s eyes stayed dry. She was thinking about the seed that needing planting, and how she would do it. That night Benna was too scared to sleep alone, and so they slept together in her narrow bed, and held each other for comfort. They had no one else now. The next morning, in the darkness, Monza dragged her father’s corpse from the house, through the woods behind and rolled it into the river. Not because she had no love in her, but because she had no time to bury him. By sunrise she was breaking the ground in the upper field.

She’d seen husk-smokers often enough, sprawling like corpses, withered to useless husks themselves, caring for nothing but the next pipe. Husk was like mercy. A thing for the weak. For the cowardly.

Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.

“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.” The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. “Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.

“Now, close your hand.” She stared into his face, empty as a fresh-dug grave. “Now, or I must do it for you.” She growled with the effort, whole arm throbbing to the shoulder. Gradually, the fingers inched closed, the little one still sticking straight. “There, you fucker!”

Patience is the parent of success,

Maybe it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back,

“The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do.

“So you’re one of them, eh?” “One o’ what?” “One of those men that like reasons. That need excuses. You’re a dangerous crowd, you lot. Hard to predict.”

There was a scar on his thick left wrist that, if you looked at it a certain way, was like the number seven. Seven was a good number today.

He wished that he was tucked up tight, safe in the darkness, but things were what they were. There was no going back.

Blades might be unsophisticated tools, but a sword through the guts killed clever men every bit as thoroughly as stupid ones.

He couldn’t remember ever being scared of a woman before, and it made him shamed and nervous at once. But he could hardly deny that, apart from the glove, and the hammer, and the sick sense of danger, he liked the looks of her. A lot. He wasn’t sure he didn’t like the danger a bit more than was healthy too. All added up to not knowing what the hell to say from one moment to the next.

“Holy men. Or madmen, depending who you ask. Down in Gurkhul, you have to pray how the Prophet tells you. Here each man can worship as he pleases.” “They’re praying?” Murcatto shrugged. “More like they’re trying to convince everyone else that they know the best way.”

“People talk a lot when they’ve nothing to say.”

blood only makes more blood. That settling one score only starts another. That war gives a bastard of a sour taste to any man that’s not half-mad, and it only gets worse with time.” She didn’t disagree. “So you know why I’d rather be free of it. Make something grow. Something to be proud of, instead of just breaking. Be… a good man, I guess.”

“If you’re a good man, and you try to think about what the right thing is every day of your life, and you build things to be proud of so bastards can come and burn them in a moment, and you make sure and say thank you kindly each time they kick the guts out of you, do you think when you die, and they stick you in the mud, you turn into gold?” “What?” “Or do you turn to fucking shit like the rest of us?” He nodded slowly. “You turn to shit, alright. But maybe you can leave something good behind you.” She barked empty laughter at him. “What do we leave behind but things not done, not said, not finished? Empty clothes, empty rooms, empty spaces in the ones who knew us? Mistakes never made right and hopes rotted down to nothing?” “Hopes passed on, maybe. Good words said. Happy memories, I reckon.” “And all those dead men’s smiles you’ve kept folded up in your heart, they were keeping you warm when I found you, were they? How did they taste when you were hungry? They raise a smile, even, when you were desperate?” Shivers puffed out his cheeks. “Hell, but you’re a ray of sunshine. Might be they did me some good.” “More than a pocketful of silver would’ve?” He blinked at her, then away. “Maybe not. But I reckon I’ll try to keep thinking my way, just the same.” “Hah. Good luck, good man.”

Give me only evil men for friends, Verturio wrote. Them I understand.

The dice came up two twos. Two times two is four. Two plus two is four. Add the dice, or multiply, the same result. It made Friendly feel helpless, that thought. Helpless but calm.

I have a feeling Friendly might be slightly on the autistic spectrum

Friendly wished they would shut their mouths so he could listen to Day’s counting. His cock was aching hard from listening to it.

Huh, I think that settles it.

No plague spreads quicker than panic, Stolicus wrote, or is more deadly.

You set your mind to killing, it’s hard to pick the number of the dead.”

The dead are past helping. Vengeance is for you.”

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness”

“That’s a strong arm and a good deed,” he gurgled over a rush of nausea. “Friendly is your name? Are you a philanthropist?” “A convict.” “I see no reason why a man cannot be both.

Like a befouled homing pigeon, the drunk returns ever to the bottle, unable to change. It is their one route of escape from the misery they leave in their wake. For them the sober world is so crowded with old failures and new fears that they suffocate in it. There is a true coward.”

“And you are?” asked Cosca. “We’re a band,” the nearest said. “And has your band a name?” They looked at each other. “No. Why would it?” “Your own names, then, if you please, and your specialities both as entertainer and fighter.” “My name’s Solter. I play the drum, and the mace.” Flicking his greasy coat back to show the dull glint of iron. “I’m better with the mace, if I’m honest.” “I’m Morc,” said the next in line. “Pipe, and cutlass.” “Olopin. Horn, and hammer.” “Olopin, as well.” Jerking a thumb sideways. “Brother to this article. Fiddle, and blades.” Whipping a pair of long knives from his sleeves and spinning ’em round his fingers. The last had the most broken nose Shivers had ever seen, and he’d seen some bad ones. “Gurpi. Lute, and lute.” “You fight with your lute?” asked Cosca. “I hits ’em with it just so.” The man showed off a sideways swipe, then flashed two rows of shit-coloured teeth. “There’s a great-axe hidden in the body.” “Ouch. A tune, then, if you please, my fellows, and make it something lively!”

“Life is a sea of sorrows, my friend. Enter!”

When God means to punish a man, the Kantic scriptures say, he sends him stupid friends, and clever enemies.

Loyalty on a mercenary is like armour on a swimmer.”

The people far prefer a leader who appears great, Bialoveld wrote, to one who is.

“The memories of our glories fade,” he whispered, “and rot away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard’s lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened. A pretty girl’s smile, never acted on. A petty wrong we let another take the blame for. A nameless shoulder that knocked us in a crowd and left us stewing for days, for months. Forever.” He curled his lip. “This is the stuff the past is made of. The wretched moments that make us what we are.”

I always had dire judgement on every issue. That is what has made my life such a series of thrills.” He slapped the bottle down on the table. “Enough penny philosophy! The fact is I need the chance, I need to change

You put a mask on a person, something weird happens. Changes the way they act along with the way they look. Sometimes they don’t seem like people at all no more, but something else.

“That’s all any of us are doing, my friend. Every business is the same, and ours is no different. Soldiering, killing, whatever you want to call it. No one wants you when you get old.” He strutted past Shivers and into the courtyard, cane flicking backwards and forwards with each stride. “One way or another, we’re all of us whores!”

“I might have known you’d be caught up in this. I thought you died in Dagoska!” “So did I, but it turned out I was only very, very drunk.”

Costa = Jack Sparrow

life rarely turns out the way you expect. We must bend with the circumstances, and simply do our best.”

Gurpi loomed up behind and smashed his lute over the man’s head. The wooden body shattered, the axe blade inside split his shoulder right down to his chest and crushed his butchered wreckage into the cobbles.

“Slaughter, by its very definition, would not appear to discriminate.”

“And how long do we wait?” demanded Morveer. “I suppose you’ll know when I say you can leave.” “And suppose… I choose… to leave before?” “You’re nothing like as clever as you think you are.” Cosca held his eye. “But you’re cleverer than that.”

“The king?” she almost whispered. “Alive. When I left him. But the building did tend to burn down after that. Maybe they got him out.”

GOD it would be awesome to start the 2nd trilogy with And so, Jezal Dan Luthar, High King of the Union was Higher than a Kite when he awoke in the cindering remains of the Prince of Styria’s whorehouse. Light smeared his vision from the burning palisade all around him. Jezal hoisted himself onto one elbow, licking his lips as his vision crawled into focus. A shallower light tugged leaden eyes to the bottom of the gaudily ornate bedchamber. There, an open doorway lead out to a smoky corridor where two hazy silhouettes met frantically. Jezal fancied he heard the shattering of some distant glass as the pair of figures lurched. The larger one remained for a moment, seeming to throw some large frisbee sort-of object down one end of the hall, then he too vanished behind the first, leaving a gaping window frame through which evinced a yawning slice of cool moonlit sky. Quite naturally, Jezal figured it wasn’t the worst option given his current circumstances, so he hauled himself up onto flimsy legs still tingling from the husk that damned consort had fed him. Where had she gone to anyhow? Couldn’t have been bothered to spare a moment to wake him in light of this madness? Whores have naught loyalty but to their own coin purses after all it seems, even in the company of kings such as he was. Jezal huffed, straightening his white coat, now soot stained and crumpled, and clucked at his teeth. A shame, he remembered how long he had spent piecing the immaculate articles of clothing together even without his royal tailors, his sense of petty achievement now squandered by the fact that perhaps no partygoers remained to even savor the memory of his striking figure that evening. A large piece of flaming canopy and timber from above the bed crashed down behind him onto the imprint his sleeping form had made as he finally finished smoothing out the wrinkles on his coat. He had the slightest inkling that he should perhaps be concerned but the world still reeled and his thoughts drew lazily around his head. For all of how hard it was to discern the enigma of where such concern was emanating, some distant part of his mind gripped on the invitation of that broken window and the open night beyond. So he stumbled towards it, placing a too-light hand on the doorframe as he steadied himself, the other rubbing his eyes from the bothersome smoke. When he took them away he was suddenly face to face with several rushing figures in gleaming metal facemasks and armor. “The King! We’ve found him! Knights of the Body, to me!” “Who in the bloody he-“ Jezal found himself swooped over the leather pauldron of one of the guards shoulders, wind pressed out of him. As the man who held him shifted his gait, Jezal lifted his head, squinting down the hallways as more guards flooded up a spiral staircase, only to be showered and buried under the burning wreckage of the roof.

“So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?” “He does not kneel, apparently,” said Ganmark. “Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?” “Nothing,” said Shenkt. “But you do not kneel.” “I used to. Long ago. No more.” Orso’s eyes narrowed. “And what if a man tried to make you?” “Some have tried.” “And?” “And I do not kneel.” “Stand, then. My son is dead.” “You have my sorrow.” “You do not sound sorrowful.” “He was not my son.”

“What will you do with so much money?” “I will count it and laugh, while considering how a rich man need not answer the questions of idiots.