Loghain was in the sitting room, a low table pulled up before his chair with a map spread out on it. He held a sheet of parchment in hand – the letter from Nathaniel, Alistair recognized from having seen it several times before – and was pouring over the map and muttering to himself, his little half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. Still trying to figure out where the sinkhole must be, Alistair guessed, having heard Loghain complain more than once about Nathaniel having failed to provide either a map or an accurate enough description of where it was in his single brief message.
Loghain peered over the top edge of his glasses at Alistair, then sighed and took them off, setting letter and glasses down on the map and gesturing for Alistair to take a seat nearby as he eased himself back to a more comfortable position in his own."Captain Garevel tells me he's satisfied with your progress so far in learning and understanding the rules of supply, but says your grasp of tactics is abysmal," he opened without any preface, and then proceeded to question Alistair for the next half hour on several of the points he'd found difficult to understand in that day's lesson. Finally he made a disgusted sound, and rose to his feet. "I think the problem is you can't visualize the problem properly," he said. "Come with me," he added, and stalked off, leading the way out his rooms and down a floor to where his offices were; his public office, as opposed to the private study that was part of his rooms.
His office was composed of several rooms, one that was his actual office, a smaller room for his clerk, and a very large meeting room that had almost as many books lining one wall of it as his sitting room upstairs did. There were also a lot of maps on the wall, of locations both within Ferelden and abroad. The middle of the room was taken up by both a small meeting table, and a much larger table, of a kind Alistair had heard of but never seen. He stopped to stare, fascinated. It was like a map of the entire Arling, only instead of being made of ink or paint it was a sculpted surface of sand and clay, with bits of broken glass or glazed tile marking the rivers and the coastal seas, cleverly graded by colour to indicate the depths. There was tufts of dyed moss for forests, paths of dyed sand to mark the roads, and little clay models scattered around to indicate the location of major estates, with little flag-topped pins stuck into the landscape to indicate points of apparent interest. "This is a sand table, isn't it?" he asked after a couple of minutes of studying it. "I've heard of them..."
"Yes, it is," Loghain said, sounding amused, and Alistair looked up from it to see that Loghain was patiently waiting him at the other end of the room, standing beside a much smaller table. "Come here," Loghain said, and turned to lean over the table he was at, a stick in hand.
Alistair reached his side in time to see that he was smoothing over the sand in a much smaller sand table, one filled only with plain sand and just a couple of paces wide on each side. He sprinkled water over it to dampen it when he was done, then swiftly shaped the damp sand into a line of hills at one side of the box, overlooking a flat area split by a meandering stream.
"All right. Hills. Steam. Meadow. Boggy areas here, here, and here," Loghain explained, dappling the sand with his fingertips to indicate the swampy bits. He pulled open a drawer in the table, and pulled out a handful of little figurines; just simple bits of wood, like a tiny clothes-peg without a split carved in it, the lower end being shaped to a point instead. The little rounded bead on the top ends were mostly plain wood, but some had been dipped in dye to colour them.
"Footmen here," Loghain said, sticking a row of plain pegs into the sand, in a doubled row stretching from the stream to the base of the hills. "Archers here." Red-marked pegs scattered in the heights. "A small force of mounted men in reserve, over here." More pegs, marked with blue this time. He straightened, and handed Alistair a handful of pegs, mostly bare or red, and only two blue. "You're advancing up the meadow, along the stream. That means from that end," he added, pointing. "Tell me what you'd do when you spotted the footsoldiers."
Alistair looked warily at the layout. "Do I know about the archers or riders yet?"
"A scout has brought you word of the archers."
Two hours later, they were still moving little pegs around, and Alistair had lost all track of time. So, it seemed, had Loghain. It wasn't until a servant knocked on the door, to announce that another messenger had just arrived from Gwaren, that they realized how late it was. "With me," Loghain commanded Alistair, after telling the servant to bring the messenger to his office. "That last effort likely would have worked," he added as they left the sand table. "Though I think you'd have lost more men than was necessary. I managed to only lose five, but only because I knew where the swampy spots were and got his horses bogged down. Ask Garevel to explain how to you tomorrow, I don't have the time now."
Nor did they, the pair of them already being at the door to Loghain's office. Loghain moved to take his seat behind the desk, and pointed at a corner of the room. "Wait there. Quietly."
The servant returned with the messenger almost immediately. A man in Gwaren livery, looking tired and travel-stained. Loghain's first question was if the man had eaten yet, and he quickly ordered the servant off again to fetch food and drink for the messenger when the man answered in the negative. Only then did Loghain ask about the message itself, which the messenger promptly pulled out of his satchel and handed over. "Have a seat, I may have questions," Loghain told the man even as he inspected and then broke the seal, having first to take another pair of reading-glasses out of his desk drawer.
Alistair could see over his shoulder from where he stood; the message was several pages of densely-packed writing, with a couple of small crudely-drawn maps on the last page. Loghain said nothing while reading it, though he snorted and made little interested or peeved noises more than once before setting it down on the desk before him and turning his attention back to the messenger, who was busily eating a large sandwich the servant had brought him.
"You left Gwaren a week and a half ago?" he asked. The messenger nodded, and hastily swallowed his bite of bread and meat.
"Hrmm. You made good time then," he said approvingly.
The man nodded. "The winds were with us all the way," he said.
"All right. Nathaniel mentioned a joining. Do you know any of the men involved?"
"Aye, ser... Wilf, the miller's son, is one of them."
"I remember him," Loghain said, nodding. "A bit simple, but a good strong man. Who else?"
The messenger nodded and continued. "Gabe, a hunter; you wouldn't know him, ser, he moved to Gwaren only three years ago. His wife Bekka, also a hunter – she's damned good with a bow. Assuming she recovers fine, anyway, her arm was badly broken, and she's pretty broken up about things. Neither of the children made it out..."
Loghain frowned, looking concerned and sitting up straighter, and interrupted the man. "Children? Nathaniel said nothing about children in his report."
The man grimaced. "Was two of 'em – a boy and a girl. Almost adults, not little ones. It was a real mess, from what I've heard. The boy – Gabe's son – was courting the girl, only her family didn't approve of his family, them being newcomers and not landed. So they went off on a walk in the woods together, like kids that age will. And got snatched by darkspawn. Wilf likes to wander, and heard the shouts and followed them far enough to see the pair being dragged off. He may be simple but he's not stupid, he knew the darkspawn were more than he could handle, even as big as he is, so he went to the boy's dad and told him what happened, and the bunch of them set out to rescue the kids; Wilf and the couple and some other hunters all from the same camp."
Loghain swore darkly. "The fools," he said, sounding tired.
"Yeah, well, they're parents," the messenger said, and shrugged. "There was a younger boy at the camp too, but they were smart enough to send him into town to spread the word and look for help. He managed to get himself lost on the way though, so it was a couple of days later before he managed to find his way in. Anyway, before then your wardens had already come along and found the signs of darkspawn, and the next day went in, not even knowing there was people in there. They found them and rescued the lot, those that were still alive anyway. The hunters were cornered in a little side-cave, half of them dead already, and your wardens got them out and then went back in after the two kids. It was too late by then though, the pair of them were already dead. Your warden says he had his mage burn the bodies properly, it being too dangerous to try and bring them out, and he brought out some of the ashes for the two families."
Loghain nodded, looking tired. "An ugly story."
"Aye, that it is," the messenger agreed sombrely. "And would have been worse, if your wardens hadn't come along in time. Anyway, Wilf and all the rescued hunters were starting to show signs of Blight sickness by then. So your warden explained to everyone that their only hope of recovering was to join the Grey Wardens, and took them all off overnight. A few of them died anyway; too far gone already I suppose, so there's just Wilf and the married pair and one of the hunters left."
Loghain nodded. "Well, I can certainly see why Nathaniel wants to remain there for a little while longer before returning north again. I'll be sending you back south with a message and orders for him and the new wardens, and likely some more wardens as well, since it sounds like there's still further clean-up to be done before the area is safe again. They'll have to go back in and kill all the darkspawn in the area, and then we'll have to try and seal the entrances that have opened. Which may require hiring some dwarven engineers to go down and collapse the tunnels, if local labour isn't enough for it. Though that's for myself and the Teryna of Gwaren to sort out, no worry of yours," he told the messenger with a tired smile. "All right, I have no further questions at the moment, you can go. It won't be until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest that I'm ready to send you back, and more likely the next day."
The messenger nodded and rose to his feet, picking up his half-eaten sandwich and mug of ale before leaving the room.
Loghain seemed to have forgotten Alistair's presence. He sighed and leaned forward, his face in his hands and shoulders slumped.
"Damnation," he said, very quietly.
Alistair stood frozen for a long moment, then hesitantly cleared his throat. Loghain sighed and sat back in his chair, turning his head to glance Alistair's way. He looked very old and tired. "Go fetch Oghren and Sigrun for me, please. Tell them I've heard from Nathaniel and I've said it's a mess, but nothing else. And then you're free to do whatever you want with what remains of the evening. Only one thing – no spreading rumours," he said, voice going stern for a moment. "I'll have to tell everyone soon enough, but that's my job, not yours."
"Yes, ser," Alistair said quietly, and hurried off.
He went to his room after locating the two dwarves, and found himself sitting silently at his own desk, just sitting there and looking at the little figurine perched nearby, and thinking of two terrified kids in the hands of darkspawn. An ugly story indeed, and likely the reality of it a far uglier story than the messenger knew to tell.