The Wisdom of Crowds (The Age of Madness #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

It was quite the shocking disappointment. Like popping some delightful sweetmeat into one’s mouth and, upon chewing, discovering it was actually a piece of shit. But that was the experience of being a monarch. One shocking mouthful of shit after another.

‘Absolutes are never to be trusted.’

‘Now listen,’ he said, raising one weak hand. ‘I was just doing—’ They were not interested. Not in his duty, or his oath, or his sympathy for their cause, or his reasonable monarchism. It was not a day for the reasonable, let alone for whatever defines an

Laying down one’s life for one’s king sounds very fine in principle, but when it comes to actually doing it, and one realises one has just the single life to give, enthusiasm understandably wanes.

‘The thing about history is you don’t know what the right side is till long afterwards, and by then it hardly matters.’ ‘That’s the sort o’ thing you hear from folk who know they’re on the wrong side.’

It’d be a different kind of fight than he was used to. Words instead of swords, ideas instead of armour, speeches instead of charges.

‘I could tire of the wisdom of crowds,’

It was better not to mention things unless you were sure of the right language. Every day brought new wrong words to avoid. New ideas at odds with the Great Change. Everyone was free to say what they wanted now, of course. You just had to be careful in case it got you hanged.

‘Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous … should always have doubts.’

But here’s the sorry truth – if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

To be unpatriotic would be terrible. To be patriotic in the wrong way could be fatal.

So the scarcity, the failures, the defeats, must be caused by profiteering, betrayal and conspiracy. If you could only purge all the disloyal, all the unfaithful, all the foreign agents, then there would be victory. Then there would be plenty. That the prescription was killing the patient could only mean that not enough had been administered. It was not a rational argument. Facts were useless against it. It was an argument based on faith. It belonged in a temple, not a court.

‘The past has never interested me. For better or worse it is done, and set, and littered with disappointments as a battlefield is littered with the dead. But the future is a ploughed field, full of potential. The future we can twist into wonderful shapes.

‘History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.’

‘Death is but an occasional hazard. Mud is a constant.’

You make every effort to steer clear o’ something, and all you do is end up mired to your fucking neck in it.’

he couldn’t allow himself to be swept off by whatever emotion blew his way.

All warriors are brave when they’re sure of victory.

‘First fear’s their weapon.’ Clover remembered winning a few fights before they began, using just a hard stare and the weight of his name. ‘Then it becomes their shield. Only thing that’ll stop their enemies trying to kill ’em. Only thing that’ll stop their friends trying to kill ’em. They get scared o’ not being feared enough, so they pile horror on horror. Turn ’emselves into monsters. And since memory tends to make the past look bigger, today’s bastards are always hunting for ways to out-bastard the bastards o’ yesteryear.’

“Speak by all means, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.”

‘Here’s your last lesson. Winning battles is bad enough. Never hang around to see one lost.’

‘Vanity, a loud voice and a loose relationship with the truth,’ whispered Zuri. ‘All the qualities of a successful politician.’

The past isn’t made of facts, not really, just stories people tell to make themselves feel better. To make themselves look better.

But love is not always a solution. In this case, it was very much a problem.