One Man and his Dog

Alistair looked up at the statue of Loghain and spat eloquently in it's direction. Yesterday, travelling towards Denerim, he had been able to see Loghain's head well before the city itself had come into view. He had heard rumours about it, of course, but seeing the size of damned thing had been sickening. Literally. He'd puked on the road until he thought his actual stomach was about to exit through his mouth. The dog had sat down, patiently waiting.

"Want some, girl?" he'd offered, waving at the watery vomit. "Get it while it's hot!"

In response the dingy white mongrel had flattened her ears and bared her teeth. Alistair had laughed, stroked her head. "That's my fussy darling," he'd cooed.

Today's main task had been finding somewhere to sleep in the city tonight. He wanted to be at the ceremony ground early, make sure he had a good spot. It had been problematic. It had to be somewhere cheap, which would let the dog in with him, and in the first place would let him in. More places would accept the dog than would accept Alistair, funnily enough. Many people had come to Denerim and no one was desperate enough for lodgers that they'd take in this filthy hulk with a matted beard and covered shield. Eventually he'd spent a few pence on a bath, given his armour a quick wipe over and hacked the biggest lumps out of his beard. Then the dog had found some odds and ends he could sell and with the extra cash and soapy smell, Alistair had been able to buy some sleeping space on the floor of a nearly clean hovel for him and the dog.

Who was now pressing herself against his legs, urging him away from the viewing point. Alistair kept thinking he should give her a name, not just keep callin her 'girl' and thinking of her as The Dog. Sometimes he felt she already had a name of her own, and no doubt thought he was stupid for not having instantly divined it. Anyway, if she thought it was a good idea to move on, it probably was. Maker, he was usually too drunk to notice anything less obvious than a squad of hurlocks dressed as prostitutes and shouting his name.

He turned away and started searching for the nearest source of cheap booze. The dog was trying to interest him in a hot pie stall but Alistair craved the warmth of wine rather than dubious pie meat. He gave in though, as he normally did, and bought a pie for them to share before getting himself a bottle of rotgut and downing a quarter of it in a single swallow.

"I am drinking less, girl. I mean, this is the first booze of the day and it's nearly noon. And I really really need this. Even if I didn't know she was in Denerim I'd know, you know. It's like she's just gone around the corner, just walked out of sight. I can smell her, for Andraste's sake, I swear to you."

He took a smaller swig of rotgut. "It's killing me."

Alistair leaned against a wall, slid down to the ground. "I hate her, I can't forgive her, I think about killing her and yet … and yet …" A tear escaped, wandered down to nestle in his beard. "She is still the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins and without her I'm a walking skeleton."

The dog lay down beside him and pushed her head under his hand.

"I'd thought the dreams after my Joining were bad, until the Blight dreams started and I called them the worst, right until the Archdemon started visiting me. How wrong I was. The worst dreams are the happy ones, where everything is just the way you want it, and then you get the nightmare of waking up remembering how you've been betrayed and how your life is a complete midden."

Alistair sat there, feet in the gutter, fingers tight around his bottle of fermented cat's piss.

"When I took her out into the Kocari Wilds to prepare for her Joining, I knew she'd be good. I mean, she'd been recruited by Duncan. Anyway, we found this wounded soldier and she helped me bandage him up. I noticed how small her hands were compared to mine, delicate fingers and neat knuckles. How can hands that small wield a sword, I wondered, how can they have the strength to grip the hilt when she slashes through someone's body?

"I kept being amazed by those hands. They were the shape and size of a noblewoman's hands, made for sewing and eating sweetmeats. Yet they had the same callouses as mine, the kind you only get from hour after hour of sword practice! Whatever I saw her do, her hands remained steady and capable, right up until ..." His voice broke, and Alistair swallowed back something that might have been a sob.

"Until she gave me an amulet she'd found in Redcliffe Castle. She thought it might be one I'd lost, that had been my mother's. Maker, how her hands were trembling! She looked and sounded like she always did but her hands shook like I'd never seen. I assumed it was a reaction to what we'd gone through at Redcliffe, because that was hard on us. I saw her hands trembling again a few nights later. The dreams had been rough and we'd both got up. We were sitting by the fire, not saying very much, and she reached forward to pull a dead leaf out of my hair, and I saw the trembling. I realised then that it was me that did that to her. She could fight darkspawn, the walking dead, face down demons and abominations without flinching but I made her tremble. My heart jumped in my chest. I wanted to kiss her more than anything in the world. I didn't though, too scared. When we did get our first kiss, it was pretty much by accident, you know? We were collecting firewood and she tripped over a fallen branch because she was laughing at something I'd said. Well, I grabbed her arm to pull her up, but pulled too hard and she cannoned right into my chest, and then I fell backwards with her on top of me. I was embarrassed by my clumsiness and she was laughing like a loon and suddenly we were kissing. I had never imagined, never dreamed ... The world shrank, everything else vanished, and only the feeling of our mouths moving together existed. It was a perfect moment, and it kills me to dream about it."

The dog wriggled round, sat up to lick off the tears that Alistair hadn't even noticed. He flung his arm over her back, pulled her close, kissed her muzzle.

"What would I do without you, girl? Where would I be? I'd be rotting unburned in a ditch if you hadn't adopted me. Thank the Maker you did. I wouldn't have this chance without you. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow but I'm going to do something. I don't understand how she can make a speech about that Maker-damned murderer but someone has to speak up with the truth. It will probably have to be me and you know how I hate speaking in public."

He knocked back another long swallow of forgetful juice. "So you see, I really do need a drink."