"That's good. Now suppose you were in the habit of going there every single morning, up to the top of Denny's Hill to look at the Dragon's Head, and then one morning you found a big dog up there, a very unfriendly dog who had decided to live there and did not like you intruding. Suppose you tried to win him over and befriend him, but he wouldn't have it, and he attacked you every single morning without fail and eventually started biting you. What would you do? Remember, he's a very big dog."
"I. . ." Uther bit down on what he had begun to say, and instead thought quietly for a long time. Garreth waited patiently, and eventually the boy nodded to himself. "I . . . I would find some other place where I could see the mountain."
"Aye, and so would most other people. But there's something wrong with that solution. Can you tell me what it is?"
Uther sat staring, his eyes troubled and his brow slightly furrowed, and Garreth tried a different tack.
"Would you be happy with your new viewpoint, think you?"
The boy sat mum, considering that, then shook his head. When he spoke, he sounded unsure of his answer. "No . . . I don't think so . . ."
"Of course you wouldn't, because what you did was run away from a brute beast! You are more clever than all the dogs that were ever whelped, so how could you possibly be happy about having let one beat you at anything? Now, suppose that, instead of running away, you had gone looking for a good solid stick, like a club, and carried it with you, so that every time the dog attacked you, you whacked it, just once, really hard across the snout. What do you think would happen then? I'll tell you what would happen: that dog would soon stop attacking you, because it would learn, very quickly, that attacking you earned it a sore snout every time. Dogs can be stupid, just like people, but unlike a lot of people, they do learn lessons.
"So here is what we are going to do, you and I. We are going to teach you to how fight against big dogs. We are going to see to it that no matter who attacks you in the future, he'll go running off with a bleeding snout and his tail between his legs. You wait and see; it won't take long. But, first, we have to ask your grandfather the King to permit us to work together. I am his personal champion, after all, so I can't really teach you unless he approves. Shall we go and find him?"
From that day forward a great part of Uther's life, and perhaps the most important part, was spent in the company of Garreth Whistler, who taught the boy not only how to fight, but also how to live his life, first and foremost as the grandson of King Ullic, but then as a future warrior, approaching the world with decency, honour and a sense of responsibility for himself and his own actions.
King Ullic, seeing the advantage to be gained from the bond between his champion and his young grandson, soon appointed Garreth to be responsible for Uther's overall moral and military development, transforming him from teacher and trainer to bodyguard and mentor.
With Garreth's help, by the time Uther turned eight, he had earned the opportunity to begin a formal cavalry-training program during the summer months he spent each year in Camulod with his cousin Cay, starting out at the very beginning as a stableboy and groom. And so when Uther's burning desire to become a Camulodian trooper overcame all else in the boy's awareness, Garreth Whistler decided, with a strong degree of reluctance, that, as an extension of his duties, he too should learn the elements of horsemanship and cavalry warfare in order to maintain his authority over his young charge. To his surprise, however, he discovered that the discipline of horsemanship brought him new and demanding challenges and a fierce enjoyment the like of which he had never known. Consequently, he threw himself into it with more enthusiasm than anything he had ever undertaken before, so that in less than half the time normally required to train a trooper, Garreth Whistler had surpassed his training mates and gained the right to seek promotion.
He held back from that, however, because he was a Cambrian warrior first and foremost, and he knew he could never be a Camulodian. Garreth Whistler knew exactly where his loyalties lay.
Uther, unfortunately, did not. But then, Garreth was twenty-two when he first learned to ride a cavalry horse, whereas Uther, achieving the same feat, was barely nine, his entire world filled to the exclusion of all else with the pressing need to learn and to master kills that intrigued and excited him. Uther had no consciousness of arcane things like loyalties.
Uther lived—or so he had always implicitly believed—in the best of all possible worlds. Ever since he had been five years old and able to think for himself, he had lived in parallel states of euphoria. Each year he would be shipped off from his home in Tir Manha to spend the late autumn, winter and early spring months with his maternal grandparents in Camulod, along with his first cousin, Caius Merlyn Britannicus. Then, in the full flush of late springtime, when the Cambrian mountains were finally free of snow and the rugged countryside around his parents' home was decked in its brightest, most promising greenery, Cay would accompany him back to Tir Manha to spend the remainder of the spring, the seemingly endless summer and the early autumn months in the Cambrian mountains among Uther's father's folk. Over the space of three long boyhood years, this was how his life had been lived, and as far as Uther and Cay were concerned, so it would continue forever.
To Uther's mind, each of the two places had its own delights. Camulod, in his eyes, was more of a temple than a fortress, a place dedicated to the military virtues defined and epitomized by men like his uncle, Picus Britannicus, the Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod, and the heroic officers and troopers who served in his command. It was a light-filled world of superb horses, fine armour and disciplined, military training—a paradise for a boy like Uther. There everything existed in a carefully prescribed manner and for a set, clearly defined purpose. Even the buildings, beginning with the magnificent Villa Britannicus, contributed to the nobility of the place. They were spacious, elegant and luxurious, with central heating and sophisticated bathing facilities. Each time Uther went to Camulod, he embraced it with a delight that was sustained by the excitement of the place until the very day he departed. And each time he left, he marvelled again at the paradox that governed his leaving, his grief offset by the gut-level excitement he felt to be escaping its stringent disciplines and returning to the freedom of a carefree boy's life in his father's home in Cambria, with ghostly stories at night around the fire and wild, unsupervised adventures among the mountains and forests where his father's people lived.
Camulod and Cambria were both home to the boy, and he was equally welcome in each of them, but he had always been aware of the significant differences between the two places, for they were poles apart in almost everything, including the way the people dressed. Each time he made the transition from one place to the other, he would find it jarring for the first few days. He wondered, from time to time, if Cay felt the same way, but he had never discussed it with his cousin, feeling, somehow, that by speaking of it he would be demeaning himself in some strange fashion. Every time that thought popped into his mind, he ignored it until it went away. But it persisted, and it always made him feel guilty and somehow disloyal. Cambria suffered, in many ways, by comparison with Camulod, and Uther was afraid that if he once gave in to the folly of examining the differences too closely, they would overwhelm him.
Strangely enough, however, all the differences that concerned him were physical. He had never believed that the actual people of Camulod and Cambria were different from each other in any major respect until he heard some of his Cambrian elders, clearly disgruntled, muttering darkly about "them others, in that damned Camulod place . . ." and he came to wonder how and why some people seemed to delight in making an insult of the word.