Jack Whyte - Uther

"I hope that by the time you grow up, young Uther, and arrive at the knowledge of women, you will have arrived also at an understanding of women. I never did, and I suppose I never will. Women are utterly unfathomable creatures. I thank all the gods, though, that they exist! Now let's head back and clean up your combat wounds, for that's what they are: wounds acquired in defending your mother's honour. But first I have to pee."

When he had finished, the tall man turned back to his small companion and they resumed walking.

"You do know that everyone in the world has to pee every day, don't you?"

"Yes, and cack."

Exactly. Everyone does . . ." They walked on in silence for a while, then, "Have you ever had to pee really badly and not been able to because you were in a place where you couldn't just untie your flaps and do it?" Uther nodded gravely, ignoring the fact that until his seventh birthday he had gone uncovered much of the time. "Hmm. Where was that, d'you recall?"

"In the King's Hall, when the Druids were offering sacrifice."

"That was just last month."

Another grave nod. "I know."

"How long did you have to hold it, a long time?" The boy nodded. "That can be very painful, having to hold it in for too long. Did it hurt much, that day?" Another nod. "Aye, I'll wager it did. It always does, you see, and it doesn't get any easier as you grow older. When you are an old man, even older than your Grandfather Ullic, there will still be times when you have to pee really badly and for one reason or another you won't be able to. So you'll hang on to it and hold it in until you think you have to burst, and it really, really hurts . . . Fear is like that, too."

"What?" The boy stopped dead in his tracks and stood staring up at the tall golden man.

"I said fear's like that, like having to pee. Everyone in the world has to pee—even women—and sooner or later, everyone in the world has to put up with the pain of not being able to do it when they want to. Same thing with fear, young Uther. Come on, keep walking.

"Everyone in the world suffers from fear, sometimes every day. And fear hurts; don't you let anyone tell you otherwise. It doesn't stop hurting as you get older, either. It still hurts me as much as it did when I was your age. Sometimes it even gets worse. You just have to learn to deal with it."

"How?"

"Ah, how . . . now there's a question difficult to answer. You see that piece of rope there, lying on the ground?"

They were passing by one of the stables on the outskirts of the village now, and Uther looked to where Garreth pointed.

"Yes"

"Then tell me quickly, how long is it?"

"How—? I don't know."

"What d'you mean, you don't know? It's a piece of rope, isn't it? You've seen pieces of rope before, haven't you?"

"Yes." Uther was frowning slightly, wondering what Garreth was talking about.

"Well, then, my question was simple enough: How long is it?"

Uther was now completely mystified, but he drew a deep breath and answered firmly, "I don't know. No one could tell, until they had measured it. They're all different. Every piece of rope is different."

"Good lad, you are absolutely correct! Every piece of rope is different. And so is every piece of fear. That's why the question you just asked me is so difficult to answer. How does a person learn to deal with fear? There could be a thousand different answers to that, because one man can have a thousand different fears, all of them biting him at the same time. He might be afraid of falling from high places, and he might be afraid, too, of drowning in deep water. Can you see how that might work? Good. But at the same time on the same day he might also be afraid of being punished by the King for something he did, and of being punished differently by the one of the King's advisers for something else that he forgot to do. He might be afraid, too, of going home to face an angry wife that night because of something he did earlier that day or the night before, and afraid, at the same time, of his neighbour's dog because it always growls at him when he passes by. He might be afraid of thunderstorms and lightning, and afraid of being made to look foolish in front of his friends. You see what I mean? Being afraid can be really complicated. Here, let's stop by the trough there and clean some of the blood off you."

As Garreth carefully cleaned the cuts and scrapes on his legs, Uther thought about all he had learned that day. Most of his attention, of course, was taken up with what was happening right there, with people stopping and staring and whispering among themselves, some of them speaking to Garreth Whistler, although none of them had the courage to come right out and ask Garreth plainly what he was about.

Finally Garreth straightened up again and dried his hands by rubbing them against his leggings.

"There," he said, his eyes still on the job he had done, "that's better. Now, I've thought about a way to answer your question." He turned and began walking again this time slinging his light, circular shield so that it hung down his back from his left shoulder, and Uther fell proudly in step beside him. They walked again until the crowded village square with its staring busybodies, as Garreth called them, had fallen far behind them. Then Garreth led Uther over to the base of a large old elm tree, where he lowered himself to the ground between two moss-covered roots and rested his back against the trunk.

"Suppose there was a place—a very special place—where you went to do the same thing every day. What do you do every single day without fail? Can you think of something, something you always do—other than peeing?"

Uther thought hard for a few moments, then slowly nodded his head. "I always look each morning to see if I can see the top of the Dragon's Head."

The Dragon's Head was the highest headland to the northwest, closest to Tir Manha, and local lore had it that if the peak were visible in the morning, free of clouds, the day would remain fair.

Garreth nodded. "Where do you look from?"

"In front of our house."

"Is that the best place to see it from?"

"No. I like to see it from the top of Denny's Hill; it's clearer form up there."

"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.