Just a snippet from the Joe Abercrombie book: Best Served Cold. The entire book is just one good snappy paragraph after another and the action scenes are even better!
"How's watching your men fall off a wall going to help?" asked Shivers.
Cosca shrugged. "It will wear down the defenders, deny them rest, keep them guessing and distract them from any other efforts we might make."
"Lot of corpses for a distraction."
"Wouldn't be much of a distraction without them."
How do you get men to climb the ladders for that?"
"Sazine's old method."
"Eh?"
Monza remembered Sazine displaying the money to the new boys, all laid out in sparkling stacks. "If the wall falls, a thousand scales to the first man on the battlements, hundred each to the next ten who follow him."
"Provided they survive to collect the bounty." Cosca added. "If the task's impossible, they'll never collect, and if they do, well, you achieved the impossible for two thousand scales. It ensures a steady flow of willing bodies up the ladders, and has the added benefit of weeding the bravest men out of the company to boot."
Shivers looked even more baffled. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Bravery is the dead man's virtue," Monza muttered. "the wise commnder never trusts it."
"Verturio!" Cosca slapped one leg. " I do love an author who can make death funny! Brave men have their uses but they're damned unpredictable. Worrying to the herd. Dangerous to bystanders."
"Not to mention potential rivals for command."
"Altogether safest to cream them off." and Cosca mimed the action with a careless flick of two fingers. "The moderately cowardly make infinitely better soldiers."
Shivers shook his head in disgust. "You people got a pretty fucking way of making war."
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