'I can't say I see the beauty of it.'
'No? What do you see?'
Logen let his eyes wander over the steep, grassy slops, spotted with patches of sedge and brown gorse, studdet with outcrops if grey rock and stands of trees.
'I see good ground for a battle. Provided you got here first.'
Logen pointed at a knobbly hilltop. 'Archers on the bluff there couldn't be seen from the road, and you could hide most of your foot in these rocks.
A few of the lightest armoured left on the slopes, just to draw the enemy on up the steepest ground there.'
He pointed to the thorny bushes that covered the lower slopes.
'You'd let them come on a way, then when they were struggling trhough that gorse, you'd give them the arrows. Shafts falling on you from above like that, that's no fun at all.
They come quicker and further, and they bite deeper. That'd break them up. By the time they got to the rocks they'd be dog-tired and running short on discipline.
That would be the time to charge. A bunch of Carls, leaping out of those stones, charging down from above fresh and keen and screaming like devils, that could break 'em right there.'
Logen narrowed his eyes at the hillside. He'd been on both sides of a surprise like that, and in neither case was the memory a pleasant one.
'But if they had a mind to hold, a few horsemen in those trees could finish it up. A few Named Men, a few hard fighters, bearing down on you from a place you never expected them, that's a terrifying thing.
That'd make them run. But tired as they'd be, they wouldn't run too fast.
That means prisoners, and prisoners means ransoms, or at least enemies cheaply killed. I see a slaughter, or a victory worth the singing, depending on which side you're on.
That's what I see.'
- The Blade Itself, Part I, Tea and Vengeance