The first thing Alistair noticed on waking was the headache and the dizziness, both of which were normal. The second thing was that the dizziness was far worse than usual, as if the whole room was rocking back and forth. And then he realized that it was rocking back and forth, and that he was surrounded by the sounds and smells of a ship at sea; creaking timbers, the slap of waves against the hull, salt-water and bilges. He sat up quickly, then moaned and fell back, feeling as if he was going to lose the contents of his stomach.
A ship. What was he doing on a ship!? Mind you, it wouldn't be the first time he'd woken somewhere with no memory of how he'd gotten there, but he was reasonably certain that his last memory of the night before was of stumbling upstairs to bed, not of ordering another drink. Had he woken and returned to the bar? Or had he lost a few days again, with what he thought was last night having actually been several days ago?
Alistair sat up again, much more cautiously, swallowing as his stomach rolled again. Moving slowly, he turned and lowered his feet to the floor. He was, he noticed, dressed only in a loose nightshirt – too large and clean to be one of his own – and his smalls. He peered blearily around the small cabin he was in; a single small room, barely longer than the bed, with a closed door to his right, and the outward-curving shape of what must be the hull of the ship to his left. The bed he'd woken in was inset along one wall, the areas above and below it being filled in with cupboards and drawers. The opposite wall was blank apart from a narrow bench, little more than a wide shelf of wood, and a lit candle-lantern hanging from a curved brace that held it far enough out from the wall what even the roughest weather was unlikely to break it.
He leaned over far enough to pull out and check the drawers under one end of the bed – both empty – and slide open the cupboard under the other end. It proved to be empty apart from a lidded chamberpot standing in some sort of bracket which he supposed served to prevent it moving around in rough seas. He took it out and put it to the use it was intended for, sighing in relief as his overly full bladder emptied.
He'd travelled by ship often enough before to know that he should take the chamberpot up and dump it over the rail when he was done, unless it was the middle of the night. He had no idea what time of day it was, really, but guessed it most likely to be daytime; the ship felt like it was moving at a decent clip, which it wouldn't do at night, and he could hear distant sounds of people moving around and talking.
After double-checking that the lid was on tight – there were few faster ways to annoy sailors than to foul the deck of their ship – he made his way to the door, relieved to find it unlocked. He leaned out into the passageway, looking both directions, before stepping out into it. There were stairs and sunlight visible off to his left, so he went that way, having to move slowly and keep one hand against the wall to steady himself. He stopped partway up the stairs, once he's climbed high enough to see above the deck.
It was a beautiful day, the sky blue apart from a few distant puffs of white and some mare's tails high overhead, a steady wind blowing. He squinted from the bright sunlight, headache worsening, and looked around. There was a small cluster of men, all sailors by the look of them, near the back of the ship – the aft end, he reminded himself – a couple up in the rigging, and a pair of more finely-dressed men up at the bow of the ship. He emerged the rest of the way from below, peering back and shading his eyes, and could just make out a dark line along the horizon, with a paler stretch broken by a narrow dark line near the middle. The high cliffs of Kirkwall, at a guess, assuming that was the northern horizon, and he'd have had to lose quite a few days for it be some other direction. Judging by their position astern, the ship was travelling to the south or southeast, toward Ferelden.
Staring at the horizon as the ship rolled with the waves proved to be an unwise decision; he staggered over to the rail, bending over it just in time to lose what little was left in his stomach, and almost dropping the chamberpot in his haste. He hung over the railing, retching repeatedly until there was nothing left to bring up.
"Hah! Leave you alone for a few minutes so I can go grab something to eat, and you up and run off on me," a voice exclaimed from nearby. A shockingly familiar voice.
"Oghren!?" he said, managing to turn around to look. It was indeed the dwarf, who he hadn't seen since walking out of the Landsmeet two years before. Oghren looked much the same as ever, apart from being out of armour; but then, only a fool wore armour on board a ship at sea.
"Here, give me that," the dwarf said, reaching out and plucking the chamberpot from his grasp. Alistair stared in disbelief, still finding it hard to believe Oghren was really there, while the dwarf quickly poured it out over the side, then picked up a nearby coil of rope, tied one end to the handle of the chamberpot, and rinsed it by the simple expedient of lowering it over the side and dunking it once ofrtwice before hauling it back up and dumping out the sea water it had filled with.
"What are you doing here?" Alistair asked, puzzled, then frowned as he finally noticed something else, a pulling on a sense he'd almost forgotten he had, it had been so long since anything had last triggered it. "Maker's breath... you're a Grey Warden!" He was shocked enough by the realization that his legs, already wobbly, gave out entirely, forcing him to sit down suddenly on the deck, back to the railing.
"That I am," Oghren said agreeably, setting the clean chamberpot down beside him. "How are ya feeling?"
Alistair barely heard, realizing now that Oghren was merely the closest of several wardens aboard the ship; what felt like three or four others below decks somewhere, Oghren right beside him, and one up at the front of the ship; one of the two men standing there and talking. He levered himself back to his feet, leaning heavily on the rail and staring forward, squinting his eyes against the sun. One roughly dressed in natural colours with a long queue of sun-bleached blond hair, the other more finely dressed, with neatly trimmed shoulder-length black hair. He turned his head toward the other man, and Alistair's breath caught at the glimpse of a familiar profile.
"That... that's..." he stuttered as he began to make his way forward, staring in disbelief at the man. No. It couldn't be...
"Hey, where ya going..." Oghren said.
The men at the prow turned and began walking back down toward the waist of the ship. Alistair forgot his hangover, forgot his unsteadiness, and let out a roar of rage, charging forward toward the pair of them. The entire world seemed to slow and quieten, the edges of his vision going dark, narrowing in on the hated face of Loghain Mac Tir. He was dimly away of Oghren shouting something, of a sea gull gliding down to land on the railing behind the two men, of the slap of his bare feet against the smooth wooden deck, of the two men's faces turning oh-so-slowly toward him, the stranger – the ship's captain, he supposed – looking startled, Loghain's face still and calm, watching him with little more than mild interest, no fear.
He drew back his arm as he leapt toward the man, already anticipating the impact, how satisfying the crunch of bone under fist would be...
Suddenly things moved very quickly indeed, a confusion of motion and then the bone-rattling feeling of his back impacting with the deck, driving the air out of him. For a moment he couldn't even breath, mouthing working but lungs frozen. Loghain was standing over him, looking down at him with much the same calm expression, the captain standing a few feet away, looking amused.
"Young idiot," Loghain said, sounding put-upon, and nudged him with one foot. Alistair managed to finally draw breath, and attempted to roll over, meaning to get to his feet and resume the attack, only to find himself retching and collapsing back to the deck, head banging painfully off the planks. His vision went dim again, his ears ringing, as he almost passed out.
"Sorry, ser," Oghren said from somewhere nearby, having apparently chased after him. "Didn't realize he was going to do that."
Loghain sighed. "The reaction is not unexpected. See he makes it back to his cabin without falling overboard." And left, resuming his conversation with the ship's captain as if nothing had happened.