There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.
I’m a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.
I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.
Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?
The only exercise I get is jumping to conclusions.
I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.
Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.
Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.
Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.
In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs.
Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The.
Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.
Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which there is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.
An old, old formula came to mind, from back when I was very young indeed. “I am a soldier.” I said it first in the language I had spoken then, then repeated myself in Sleepy’s own Dejagoran dialect. “I’ve been distracted before. I’m still alive.
One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. Lightning.
No one will sing songs in our memory. We are the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Our traditions and memories live only in these Annals. We are our only mourners. It is the Company against the world. Thus it has been and ever will be.
One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.
We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.
Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!
The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.