Jack Whyte - Uther

"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."