You cannot make a good soldier until you have trained him to the point he can take some pride in merely surviving it.
—Old military maxim
Train hard, fight easy.
—Alexander Suvorov
Pain is weakness leaving the body.
—US Marine Corps recruiting slogan
...here are a few more pictures of Spetsnaz training, which, as far as I can tell, is basically just a bunch of big, gigantic, frighteningly-jacked Russian dudes beating the unholy shitburgers out of each other with pipes, chains, and dead cats, all of which may or may not currently be on fire.
The whip which degraded the Helot served to ennoble the Spartan boy...The master was most the master who could best endure the toils of a slave.
—Persian Fire, by Tom Holland
Fiction
Gwendolyn: Faith, do you know who the Spartans were? Faith: Wild stab: a bunch of guys from Spart?
Gwendolyn: They were the fiercest warriors known to Ancient Greece. And they lived in quarters very much like these. Do you know why? Because a true fighter needs nothing else.
Your life shall be a series of trials, one after the other until you attain the glory that is your due at the right side of the Emperor. You shall face the hardest first, so that we know we are not wasting our time.
"More madness," said Arstan, when he heard. "How can any man possibly remember a new name every day?"
"Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant."
Dany's mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, "Whose infants do they slay?"
To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother's eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them."
She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. "You take a babe from its mother's arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?"
When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. "What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child's owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal." He tapped his whip against his leg. "Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find."
He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly, until at last I seized his forearm and snapped it back against itself. His training suffered while the arm healed, of course, but I felt this was a lesson he must learn early, and well.
When a mother gives birth in our fortress, the guards come and take the child away. The mother may protest, but the child no longer belongs to her, but the fortress.
The child is placed alone in a pit filled with crazed animals, along with food and drink fit for a king. Every few years, the "Invigorator" is powered, and searing flames purge their bodies of all weakness. Only the truly worthy live through the trials.
At the dawn of the 12th year that the child has been in the chamber, the gates are opened, and a single, burnt, sociopathic, killing machine is released into the fortress. They are lead to their private barracks where they take their rightful place as an elite warrior of fable.
Weapons fit for the gods themselves are forged in their name.
Armor is not necessary, for no weapon can pierce their skin.
They are the first, and last line of defense.
They are the Children Of Armok.
Marcus Cole: The Minbari say the only way to understand the battle is to understand the language. War is as much concept as execution. Dr. Stephen Franklin: What else did they teach you? Marcus Cole: Delight, respect, compassion. That for your actions to be pure they must proceed from direction, determination, patience and strength. I'm afraid I'm still working on patience. They taught me how to live, how to breathe, how to fight and how to die. And they taught me terror. How to use it. And how to face it. Dr. Stephen Franklin: I think I'd like to hear more about that. Marcus Cole: No. You wouldn't.
