by L.A. Wilson

Created on: July 02, 2007

As soon as I joined him, he turned to me and said, "Did you hear me? What I said to Cai?"
"I did. I don't know why, but he's impossible, I know it, I heard him even out here. Got a mouth Cai has. What was it all about?"
A long tense hesitation.
"They can't leave me alone for a moment," he finally said. "Did you hear them, trying to get me to drink myself stupid? Is this what they want? Do they want me stupid? You know, even you've done this to me. You've tried to get me drunk, haven't you?"

"Once or twice. So what? It's only a bit of ale and they will be doing this to you until you let go and die."
"They want me to be invincible, to be me. And yet they want me drunk and stupid like some of them. They are not all like that I know, but they want me like them, and yet they want me special. I can't give them drunk I can't. It has to stop" then he turned and looked right into me. "Even you do it." He took my arm and pulled me further into the darkness, saying, "I want you to help them stop and I have to tell you why I don't like drinking I don't want to say it, to mess up this night. But I have to tell something I've never told anyone before in my whole life; not even you."
"This is getting dark Arthur slow down, what're you trying to say?"
"Why I don't like being pressured to drink."
I stood watching him as he started to pace up and down like he did when something was biting him.
"Tell me then and hurry up, I want more ale," and I laughed.
He stopped pacing, moved closer to me and said, "I will then ... when I was nine years old, one winter, my father had a band of visiting warriors for him to entertain. He used me to entertain them."
Uthyr.
This name struck into me the moment Arthur said it
He went on, "He asked me, as a nine year old, to join his drinking party and he gave me a mug of ale. I drank it, I thought it was fun, I thought I was a warrior in the making. But he didn't stop with one mug. When I begged him to stop, he got his warriors to hold me down on the floor" his voice faltered, he turned away, stood away from me my heart was beating fast because I knew what Uthyr was capable of when it came to torturing his son.
From where he stood, Arthur told me the rest.
"So they held me down; they were laughing, they were drunk. Uthyr took hold of my chin and forced my mouth open and he poured the ale down my throat and he kept on doing it until I was drowning in it. I will never forget it; he nearly killed me, he didn't know when or how to stop. He kept it up until one of

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