Uther cc-7

by Jack Whyte

  "So you failed on every count, and I succeeded. But look at the reasons for your failure, Uther. You used a different kind of coal, because you didn't take the trouble to make sure it was what you thought it was. That is an error you probably will never make again. You learned through bitter experience that you can never afford to assume anything, and from now on, I would dare to say you'll always check to make sure that things that might be important to you are, in fact, what they appear to be. Am I correct?" The boy nodded. "Good. Next, you took careful aim, and then you swung your blade up over your head, and that cost you everything you had gained in taking careful aim. Lesson: you may do that when you are swinging at something large, impossible to miss and undefended, but when your target is as tiny and difficult to hit as a thin line drawn on a stone, why, then you must use your head and find a different way to hit it. Then, too, the poorness of your blade was self-defeating. Nothing ever will be more important to you in a struggle than the quality of your weapons. In almost every instance of hand-to-hand fighting, your life will depend, almost absolutely, upon your having the best blade. Never keep or use an inferior weapon. You might as well chop off your own hands.

  "So, those were the points that governed your failure in Council today, would you not agree? I thought so. Well, were you faced with doing exactly the same thing tomorrow, and if you look to those same points, remembering what happened today, you would surely succeed. And you could do it time and time again thereafter and succeed every time, because you have learned your lessons. Do you understand me?"

  Uther nodded his head wordlessly and Ullic repeated the gesture. "Good. Now let's look at my successes in the same light. I succeeded in splitting your stone, but I didn't know what I was doing, and I did not know what was going to happen. I did all of the right things, but I did them all because I came to them with curiosity and time to study them. I had no pre-formed notions of what I was about or of what I thought to achieve. I was merely inquisitive and curious. But I would never have done anything at all, boy, had you not brought that piece of coal, together with a blade, to my attention. So, hear me on this, Uther, and hear me clearly.

  "Your Grandfather Varrus is a very clever and admirable man, and he has no fear of assigning work to other people who are suited for it. That is a Roman idea, called delegation—I'm sure you must have heard the word in Camulod. It means work allocated to someone by the direct order of his legate, his commander, along with the authority and responsibility to complete it properly. Delegation, through what the Romans refer to as the chain of command—from legate to tribune, to junior tribune, to centurion, all the way down to the common soldier—enabled men like your Uncle Picus and his father, Caius Britannicus, both of whom were Roman legates, to build an empire. You spend almost half of your time in Camulod, and you're a clever and observant lad, so you already know much of what I am telling you, but from now on, keep that word in your mind . . . delegation. It's something we here in Cambria are not good at. In fact, it does not exist here. We Cambrians have too much foolish pride to let ourselves be seen to delegate tasks, because it might appear that we are shirking doing them ourselves; and we have too much pride, as well, to submit ourselves to being selected to perform them, lest we appear to be inferior and too easily led. We suffer greatly by such stupidities, and you'll see that as you grow older.

  "But there are other words I'll wager you'll hear Publius Varrus use in much the same way as he speaks of delegation. Strategy and tactics are two of them. Do you know those?"

  "I think so, Tata. They're war words, are they not?"

  "Aye, and very important war words, too. Strategy is the art of planning, of drawing up a series of ideas for waging a campaign of war, moving large groups of men around, in theory, as though they were pieces in a table game. Strategy is the working out of battles in an army commander's mind. Tactics, on the other hand, is the art of putting strategy to work, making it reality. A legate like your Uncle Picus might dream up a strategy for fighting a war or a campaign, and he might even visualize the kind of tactics necessary to achieve his ends. But when the die is cast and the blood begins to spill onto the ground, he is forced to rely heavily on his battle commanders, that collection of individual group leaders that the Romans called staff officers, to make up their own tactics in the heat of the fighting and to make decisions, sometimes at a moment's notice, on how to use their forces to best advantage in order to achieve victory along the lines their legate planned at the beginning.

  "It's the field officers who define the fighting tactics, boy, and don't ever lose sight of that truth: the battle commanders decide the tactics when the war turns real. They're the decision-makers in the middle of a battle, because they are the men who can best see what's happening around them, when the enemy is hammering at them with everything he has. They're the men at the centre of spur- of-the-moment urgency, and it's their responsibility to move their troops as needed and to be flexible enough to be able to adjust to instantaneous demands. Strategy and tactics, Uther. Neither one can succeed, or perhaps even exist, without the other. And I know, too, that only very seldom can the same man put both into action."

  Ullic fell silent for a while, and his grandson sat staring at him, wondering what would come next. Eventually the King nodded his head and spoke again. "Your idea today was pure strategy. Where you fell down was in your tactics, because you had not thought them through. But tactics can be taught, Uther, and you have the finest teachers that any boy could have . . . Garreth Whistler, here in Cambria, and all your tutors down in Camulod. They'll teach you tactics, and you'll learn them easily. Strategy, however . . . Well, that's another matter.

  "Strategy can be taught, but only by using examples of what has been done already. Every time a Roman legate won a great victory, the details of his plans were written down and widely discussed afterwards. The Romans are great keepers of written records. We, on the other hand, write nothing down because it is forbidden by our ancient laws. And yet we still keep records, carefully guarded in the lays of all our Druids. Great tales and records of history's great fighters, just like those the Romans have.

  "Now anyone with a memory can learn and memorize the battle plans of history's great generals . . . not all of whom were Roman, by the way. But the true greatness of the very finest strategists who ever lived, men like Julius Caesar and Alexander of Macedon, lay in the fact that every one of them was an original thinker. Men like those don't use other people's ideas. They dream up their own . . . ideas that have never been heard of before. And that is what you did today. That's a great ability, boy, and it is one that should be close-guarded. I learned about Caesar and Alexander from Caius Britannicus before you were born. Caius is dead now, of course, but his sister, your grandmother, knows as much about these things as he did. I will have her spend time with you, talking of things like that. . . Roman things.

  "In the meantime, from this moment forward, I want you to start thinking of yourself as a commander of men, because you will be one someday. It might not be soon enough to please you, and you might not ever take my place as King, because it is not hereditary and therefore not within my power to bestow, but you will sit, as my first-born grandson, in my Chief's chair some day, when your own father dies. And as a Chief of Pendragon, you will have scope for all the strategy, all the ideas you can devise. You will need fresh notions of how to make things better for your people, but even more you will need to surround yourself with men you can trust, men of ability and men of strong personal honour to carry out your ideas and to improve on them with tactics. So I want you to remember what I told you about delegation. As I said, our people distrust it today, but who knows, if you work at it hard enough you might be able to change that, to everyone's benefit, by the time you achieve the Chief's chair."

  The King stopped and looked his grandson straight in the eye, reaching out to grasp the boy by the upper arm. "You are ten now, are you not? Well, that's much more than halfway towards manhood, so you've spent more than
half your time learning to be a boy. Now you have less than that amount of time to learn to be a man. One of these days—and it won't take long, believe me—you will be a warrior. And you will be a good one, I have not the smallest doubt. Your father and your mother have done a fine job of making you what you are today, and I find myself looking forward to the enjoyment of watching you grow older.

  "You will find no shortage of people in this place, however, who will disapprove of everything you do . . . they do that already. Let them. All you have to do to rise above whatever they might say to you or about you is to keep what I tell you now in your heart: much of their disapproval—all of it, in fact—is born of envy. You are my grandson, Uther Pendragon. You are born to be a Chief and to enjoy privileges they will never know, so they will demand that you be perfect, without flaw or blemish . . . and that, of course, no man can be. So they will continue to be disapproving, but they will accept you, and they will respect you grudgingly, so be it you remain true to yourself and them. And for all of their complaining, they will obey you nonetheless. That is the way we Cambrians are, Uther. It is a thing inborn in all of us, whether we be Griffyd, Llewellyn, Pendragon . . . we are a race who do not smile easily, and we have no great admiration for the attribute of tolerance. We distrust everything we do not know and do not understand, and there is very little that we do know and understand. But we are an old people, Uther, ancient and strong, and we have reason to be proud of who and what we are. I believe it will be important for you to know that in the future and for you to understand it fully, although I don't think I understand it fully myself, even after a lifetime.

  "So be it. I think the gods are telling me to pay more attention to you than I did to your father . . .

  "More than twenty years ago, closer to thirty if truth be told, Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus told me that the Empire would collapse one day soon and that the Romans would be gone from Britain then, leaving us to go our way alone. I remember I laughed aloud the first time I heard that. Thought they were mad, I did. They were the Romans, not I, and yet I was the one who believed that Rome was eternal and rock-steady.

  "Well, I stopped laughing over that long ago, because I began to see the signs of what they had described becoming plain in the months and years that followed hard on the heels of our early talks . . . and now it has been three years since the last Roman army units patrolled Britain. Everything is changing, Uther, all the things I knew and believed when I was your age, all the things in which I had trust. Your father is a man now, and there's nothing more that I or anyone else can teach him. All that remains for him to learn is what every man must learn for himself. But you, boyo . . . there are many things I know I can teach you, so you and I are going to spend a good deal more lime together after today. I am going to teach you how to be a Chief."

  Seeing the expression on his grandson's face, he shook his head and wagged one finger in the air, drawing his features into a serious mask.

  "It is not as straightforward as it sounds, despite what people may tell you. A man may hold the name and status of Chief but be a nothing all his life, doing no one good, including himself. It happens all the time . . . far from unusual. But for a man to be a Chief in reality and not in name alone is another thing altogether. To achieve that, a man must have worked hard to learn a few choice and specific things. And a good Chief will make a good King, because a King is simply a Chief with greater powers. I will teach you about honour and integrity. I'll teach you how to look at your people, man and woman, and at the problems that they have among themselves from time to time, the squabbles and the differences that soon call for judgment, and I will show you how to assess, in your own mind, the rights and wrongs and strengths and weaknesses of each case, so that you may judge wisely and without bias. There's more involved than simply being a judge, of course, much more, just as there is much more to life, but that's the kind of thing I can teach you. Would that please you?"

  The boy nodded, wide-eyed, and his grandfather grinned and stood up.

  "Good. Then let's return to those that love us—and to those who drive us wild with impatience."

  Chapter SIX

  Ullic was true to his word, and in the weeks that followed his talk with Uther, the two were often seen wandering together or fishing in a stream, up to their knees in icy water, talking earnestly together. At such times the King would brook no interruption, and his fierce gaze was enough to frighten off anyone who came close enough to claim his attention.

  Less than a month after the day on which he made the promise, however, the King died of an apoplexy that suffused his face with blood, turned his eyes blood red and killed him instantly. He had been sitting, thinking, in his favourite spot atop an immense, round-topped boulder that lay on a hillside close by Tir Manila and from which Ullic, who had sat there almost every day of his life, had been known to swear that he could see into every part of his holdings when the light was right.

  On the afternoon of his death, he had been shouting down to one of his advisers, who had approached him against all custom, defying the unwritten law that no one might disturb the King when he was on his Thinking Stone. An envoy had arrived, this man reported, bringing information that demanded an immediate response and therefore had to reach the King's attention instantly. Ullic had risen from his seat and was in the act of moving to climb down from the stone in his normal way and by his normal route when, according to those who saw it, he suddenly reared up to his full height, stiffened into rigidity and fell over backwards, crashing to the ground at the rear of the stone, out of sight of the watchers.

  By the time they reached him, Ullic Pendragon was already dead. Several witnesses swore that he appeared to have caught his heel on some projection of the stone's surface, but nothing that might have caused the King to trip, stagger or lose his balance could be found, despite a most careful search. The stone was as smooth as an egg, and the Druids declared that Ullic died of an apoplexy—a flux of blood to the brain.

  Uther would never forget the day that it happened, because he had been hunting alone with his father for the first time ever, accompanied only by an escort of Pendragon bowmen. Uther was revelling in the unaccustomed pleasure of sharing practically unlimited time and close intimacy with his father, and he knew that he owed thanks for this privilege to his grandfather. Ullic had been talking with him about Uric, about the amount of time the two of them spent together, father and son. And it had been less than three days later that Uric had called the boy to him and told him to be ready to ride out hunting with him the following morning.

  Uther loved his father deeply and enjoyed his company greatly, but he had always known, because it was a fact of life, that his father was his own father's son, and therefore a Chief in training. The King's rank and title lay in the gift of the seven ruling Chiefs of the Pendragon Federation, but the Chief's rank and title were hereditary, so Uric would inherit the Pendragon Chief's chair one day in the future when his father Ullic died, and by the same token, Uther would one day inherit the Chief's chair from his own father. Uric might never be King Uric, but so long as he outlived his father, he would most certainly become Chief Uric. Ullic was more than happy for his son to begin taking on some of his responsibilities, but that left Uric little time to enjoy his own son's companionship.

  It was late afternoon, and they were returning, father and son and a few bowmen, to the camp they had set up the day before in a grassy meadow where two shallow but respectably wide rivers met and joined together. The hunting had not been good that day, but they were far from discouraged, and they were talking about trying to catch some trout for dinner as they rode their mountain ponies through the belly-deep grass of the meadow surrounding the low knoll on which they had built their camp. Only moments after reaching the height of the knoll, however, they saw a runner coming directly towards them, moving at great speed, and something about the way the man held himself alerted them, long before he reached them, that he bore important tidings. Neither of
them, however, could have anticipated the news that he brought. The King had fallen from his Thinking Stone, the fellow said, injuring himself gravely, and the Lord Uric was summoned home immediately.

  Uther could see his father's frustration begin to build from the moment they first heard the news, because they were many miles and hours of travel away from Tir Manha, and the runner could tell them nothing more. He himself had not been anywhere near the scene of the "accident." He was merely the last link in one of the four teams of runners that stood ready at all times to carry important tidings at high speed from one end of the Federation territories to the other, radiating north, south, east and west from Tir Manha. The information given to such men was always as short and simple as possible, as a guard against both forgetfulness and confusion. But Uric's concern and fears for his father's welfare demanded more information, and so within moments. Uric had begun the tasks of breaking camp and setting out immediately for home. He and Uther were the only two mounted members in the party. All the others were on foot—some thirty men in total—since this was a genuine meat-hunting party and not merely a sporting foray. Unless the two riders struck off immediately on their own to make their best speed homeward to Tir Manha, leaving everyone else to follow at their own pace, they would be tied to the pace of the slowest members of the party, the butchers, whose responsibility it was to dress, cut and transport the meat killed by the hunters.

  As Uther expected, his father wasted no time in deciding to abandon the rest of the party and strike out for Tir Manha, but he was genuinely concerned that Uric might decide to go without him, thinking him too young for such a rugged and dangerous ride. There were at least four hours of daylight remaining, Uther knew, and mounted as well as they were on their sturdy, mountain-bred garrons, the two of them should easily be able to ride upwards of sixteen miles in that time, which would take them halfway home. But Uric would not allow mere darkness to stop his progress. He would keep riding into the night until he could go no farther, and if the night was clear and no accidents befell him, he would be close to home by dawn. It was that thought, that consideration, that made Uther fear his father's decision, for it seemed highly likely to the boy that Uric would not wish to endanger his only son on a long, perilous journey in the darkness through unknown territory.