The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.
I have been told I always look at the dark underbelly of tomorrow. Possibly. You’re less likely to be disappointed that way.
Singed,” he said, assuming that air of phony dignity cats adopt after some particularly inept performance. Something like, “That’s what I meant to do all along.
The Lady made a few gestures around Bomanz – who looked pretty moth-eaten – and said a few words in a language I did not understand. Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?
If war is too important to trust to generals, then policy is too important to trust to politicians.
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints.
Wars are being fought every day, even where armies are not on the march. And wars within wars. And wars behind wars.
Its front sags against its neighbor to the right, clinging for support like one of its own drunken patrons.
An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronising wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.
Order was what regular people wanted. Order and security were necessary before prosperity could take hold. The political crap, the who is going to be in charge, did not matter to most folks.
There was no peace inside the bounds spanned by God’s Peace. Because men did not just demand submission to the Will of God, they demanded submission to themselves. Nor could they agree what the Will of God might be.
The age is sorrowfully short of characters of the magnificently villainous vitality of those the Dominator took in olden times: Soulcatcher, the Hanged Man, Nightcrawler, Shapeshifter, the Limper, and such. Those were nastymen of the grand scope, nearly as wild and hairy in their wickedness as the Lady and Dominator themselves.
What did we do today to frighten the world?
My guess is, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Crows.
Raven is an asset in any game including One-Eye. One-Eye cheats. But never when Raven is playing.
He’d described himself as looking like a child molester waiting for a chance to strike. He wasn’t comfortable with his appearance.
An army without faith in itself is beaten more surely than an army defeated in battle.
It is not good form to bicker with your superiors, however wrong they may be and however one-sided their determination of their superiority.
It was a night for screamers. A broiling, sticky night of the sort that abrades that last thin barrier between the civilized man and the monster crouched in his soul.
The books must be written. The truth must be recorded even if fate decrees that no man ever reads a word I write. The Annals are the soul of the Black Company. They recall that this is who we are. That this is who we were. That we persevere. And that treachery, as it ever has, failed to suck the last drop of our blood.
Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission, how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company.