Some random military wisdom gleaned from The Last Kingdom. Also, feline berserkers.

On leadership:

An army, I learned in time, needs a head. It needs one man to lead it, but give an army two leaders and you halve its strengh.

I'm thinking of the endless committees and meetings at work. Of the top-heavy procedures and decision matrices (whoever coined that term should be fed to the Danes.) Also, that stupid plotline on The Office where Michael and Jim were co-managers. You also halve the funniness.

On the logistics of war:

The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the horse who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I was to discover that war was really about food. About feeding men and horses. About finding food. The army that eats wins. And, if you keep horses in a fortress, it is about shoveling dung.

Of battle tech:

I like bowmen. They can kill at a great distance and, even if their arrows do not kill, they make an enemy nervous. Advancing into arrows is a blind business, for you must keep your head beneath the rim of the shield, but shooting a bow is a great skill. It looks easy, and every child has a bow and some arrows, but a man's bow, a bow capable of killing a stag at a hundred paces, is a huge thing, carved from yew and needing immense strength to haul, and the arrows fly wild unless a man has practiced constantly, and so we never had more than a handful of archers. 

On the shield wall as defense:

You can hear a shield wall being made. The best shields are made of lime, or else of willow, and the wood knocks together as men overlap the shields. Left side of the shield in front of your neighbor's right side, that way the enemy, most of whom are right-handed, must try to thrust through two layers of wood.



Of heaven:

Fight the hoarde. Sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming.

Not. That's the opening track on Led Zeppelin III, of course.

Speaking of Viking kittens, you need to click this link or face the wrath of Odin. It just goes to YouTube, nothing crazy. Also, Odin motherfuckers!