The Trouble With Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

The older you get, the more you realise the grown-ups won’t suddenly walk in and set things right. You want things right, you have to put ’em right yourself.’

Old men, I swear. They get weak and stubborn both at once, so they make no good ideas but won’t be shifted from the bad ones.’

She had expected to be thoroughly annoyed, watching her body stolen more each day by a selfish little parasite. But there was something oddly comforting about her bulging belly. She was even finding herself singing to it, from time to time.

‘The dead save me from the fucking young.’ ‘No getting away from ’em, sadly,’ muttered Clover. ‘The older you get, the more of ’em there are.’

‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’ Helmuth von Moltke

In business, few things went entirely to plan. In war, plans and reality barely noticed each other in passing.

What he really wanted to say was that if you don’t like dead folk you shouldn’t start wars, but the best he could think of was, ‘I’m told it went wrong.’

Years back, when they first made him a sergeant, he’d imagined the officers must have all the answers. When he was given his commission, he’d imagined the generals must have all the answers. When King Orso made him a general, he’d imagined the Closed Council must have all the answers. Now, as a lord marshal, he finally knew it for an absolute fact. No one had the answers. Worse. There weren’t any. The best you could do was play a long con and act as if you had them. Never show fear. Never show doubt. Command was a trick. You had to spread the illusion that you knew what you were doing as deep and as wide through your men as you could. Spread the illusion and hope for the best.

But once you’ve stabbed a man in the back, you’re best off stabbing him a few more times, don’t you reckon? Make sure of the job.’

She could very easily have been dead. But you know things are bad when you cling to that for comfort.